Brazil court unseals Flavio Bolsonaro file over Banco Master movie money

Brazil's Supreme Court on 11 September unsealed documents showing that Senator Flavio Bolsonaro is under investigation for alleged money laundering, corruption, tax evasion and related crimes tied to failed lender Banco Master. Justice Andre Mendonca opened the inquiry in July at the request of the Federal Police, with the Prosecutor General's Office in agreement.

Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, is the main right-wing challenger to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the election whose first round falls on 4 October. He told a campaign stop in Manaus that he has nothing to hide and that he was raising private money for a film. He asked the court to make the whole file public.

Police pointed to money from Daniel Vorcaro, former chief executive of Banco Master, for a movie about Jair Bolsonaro titled Dark Horse. Messages published by Intercept Brasil said Flavio asked Vorcaro for 131 million reais, of which 60 million reais were paid, according to spreadsheets seized by police. Other reports put the sum examined at 61 million reais, about $12 million.

Vorcaro was arrested in March. Police put Banco Master's alleged fraud at about 12 billion reais, roughly $2.3 billion, and say hundreds of thousands of clients, including state pension funds, were sold shaky paper. The wider Master inquiry is listed as INQ 5026. Flavio's case was opened as a sealed side file and then partly exposed when Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin asked Mendonca to lift secrecy in order to ease a fight inside the court.

Lula's allies had accused Mendonca, who was named to the court by Jair Bolsonaro, of protecting the senator. Unsealing the existence of the inquiry answers that charge in one direction only. It shows the file exists. It does not show what the evidence will support, and the detailed record remains restricted.

Brazilian campaign law does not freeze a candidacy because a justice has opened an inquiry. Flavio can stay on the ballot. What he cannot control is the daily drip of seized messages and bank sheets in the last three weeks before the vote. Lula's campaign will treat 61 million reais from a jailed banker as the story. Flavio's campaign will treat it as a private film budget and a political leak.

The legal questions are specific. Was the film money a commercial investment, a donation, or a channel to move Master funds? Did any of it pass through accounts that should have been declared? Did the senator use office to help the bank? Those are the counts police listed. None of them has been tried.

Banco Master is already the largest bank-fraud case in the country's recent record. Adding a presidential front-runner to the caption turns a financial file into an election file. Mendonca now has to run both the secrecy fight and the substance before 4 October, or accept that voters will decide first and judges later.