- Brazil’s Central Bank liquidated Banco Pleno on Wednesday — a small lender controlled by Augusto Ferreira Lima, former CEO and partner of Daniel Vorcaro, the banker at the center of the Banco Master fraud scandal
- Banco Pleno held just 0.04% of total financial system assets, but its collapse is the third liquidation tied to the Master orbit since November, after Master itself and its subsidiary Will Bank
- The Master crisis has triggered a record R$41 billion ($7.6B) deposit guarantee payout to 1.6 million customers and forced the Central Bank to announce a regulatory overhaul of how banks raise money through digital platforms
Three months after the spectacular collapse of Banco Master — Brazil’s biggest banking scandal in decades — the wreckage keeps spreading. On Wednesday, the Central Bank liquidated Banco Pleno, a small institution controlled by Augusto Ferreira Lima, Vorcaro’s former CEO and business partner. The regulator cited deteriorating liquidity, violations of banking regulations, and failure to comply with Central Bank directives. Assets of controllers and administrators were immediately frozen, as required by law.
Banco Pleno is tiny: 0.04% of total financial system assets. But its origin story runs directly through the Master catastrophe. The institution was formerly Banco Voiter, itself a rebrand of the old Banco Indusval. In early 2024, Master acquired Voiter. By July 2025, Lima bought it from Vorcaro and renamed it Banco Pleno. The Central Bank approved the transfer with conditions — including a mandatory liquidity crisis plan. It wasn’t enough. With R$6.8 billion ($1.2B) in liabilities concentrated heavily in certificates of deposit, the bank couldn’t raise fresh funding as market confidence in anything connected to the Master universe evaporated.
A system under stress
The broader picture is what matters internationally. Banco Master was liquidated on November 18 after federal police arrested founder Daniel Vorcaro at Guarulhos airport. Investigators allege a R$12.2 billion ($2.3B) fraud involving fabricated loan portfolios and inflated balance sheets. The deposit guarantee fund, the FGC, is processing a record R$41 billion ($7.6B) payout to approximately 1.6 million affected customers — the largest in Brazilian financial history. Will Bank, a Master subsidiary, was liquidated in January after defaulting on Mastercard payment obligations.
The Central Bank has responded by announcing a regulatory overhaul. In early February, officials said they would revise FGC rules and tighten oversight of how banks distribute high-yield products through digital platforms — the mechanism that allowed Master to attract billions in deposits at rates reaching 140% of the benchmark CDI. Banco Pleno may be small, but it is the latest evidence that when a mid-sized bank collapses in Brazil’s interconnected financial system, the aftershocks don’t stop at the institution’s own walls.