Brazil: Banco Master Money Trail Leads to Supreme Court Justice

The Banco Master scandal moved deeper into Supreme Court territory on Tuesday when the Senate’s organized crime committee broke the bank and tax secrecy of the Arleen Fund — the investment vehicle used to buy Justice Dias Toffoli’s family stake in a luxury resort with money traced to the collapsed bank’s inner circle.

The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, has published a comprehensive timeline of the Banco Master scandal — Brazil’s largest banking fraud in a generation. Here is what the CPI’s latest move reveals about the money trail between the bank and the judiciary.

The Banco Master Scandal’s Resort Connection

The Arleen Fund acquired a stake in the Tayaá Resort in Paraná on September 27, 2021 by purchasing the share held by Maridt — a family company whose name combines the city of Marília with the Dias Toffoli initials. Justice Toffoli admitted being a partner in Maridt alongside his brothers. The purchase price was approximately R$20 million ($3.4 million).

The Arleen Fund’s sole investor is another fund called Leal, whose sole investor from 2021 to 2025 was Fabiano Zettel — a pastor and businessman married to Vorcaro’s sister. Financial intelligence reports from Brazil’s COAF show Zettel moved R$99.2 million ($17 million) in just seven months, an amount flagged as incompatible with his known financial capacity. Of that, R$25.6 million ($4.4 million) was transferred to the Leal Fund in 11 installments during the period surrounding the resort purchase.

Why the CPI Targeted This Fund

Senator Sergio Moro filed the secrecy-breaking request covering the period from February 2021 to January 2026. The move was a deliberate workaround after Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes blocked the CPI’s earlier attempt to access Maridt’s records directly, ordering the committee to destroy data it had already received.

By targeting the Arleen Fund instead of Toffoli’s family company, investigators aim to trace the same money from the other side of the transaction. The CPI also approved the summoning of influencer Martha Graeff, Vorcaro’s ex-fiancée, whose name appeared in messages and documents seized during the Banco Master investigation.

From Resort Deal to Supreme Court Crisis

The Tayaá resort deal is what detonated the Supreme Court’s credibility crisis. When Federal Police found messages on Vorcaro’s phone discussing payments to Toffoli’s company, the justice was forced to leave the Banco Master case he had been overseeing — under a secrecy order he himself had imposed. After a meeting of all eleven justices, the case was reassigned to André Mendonça, who promptly ordered the arrests of both Vorcaro and Zettel.

Toffoli maintains he sold the stake “at market value,” denies ever receiving money from Vorcaro or Zettel, and says he did not know who managed the Arleen Fund. The scandal has since expanded to a second justice: forensic analysis of Vorcaro’s phone uncovered WhatsApp messages with Justice Alexandre de Moraes on the morning of the banker’s first arrest, alongside a R$129 million ($22 million) legal contract between the bank and Moraes’s wife’s law firm.

The CPI’s decision to pursue the fund’s records rather than the justice’s company signals that investigators have found a way around the Supreme Court’s protective instincts. With Vorcaro weighing a plea deal that could implicate figures across all three branches of government, the Arleen Fund’s bank statements may reveal whether the R$20 million resort purchase was a legitimate real estate transaction — or something the Brazilian public has every reason to suspect was far more.