Brazil: Supreme Court minister Moraes Cannot Remain Untouchable
By Hotspotnews
The latest revelations in the Banco Master scandal have stripped away the last pretense that Alexandre de Moraes operates under the same rules as everyone else. Messages recovered from Daniel Vorcaro’s phone show a Supreme Court justice receiving pleas for protection, advice on leaving the country, and involvement in a lucrative contract with his wife’s law firm. These are not rumors from the opposition. They come from a Federal Police report that Justice André Mendonça had the courage to bring into the open.
For years Moraes has wielded extraordinary power: secret inquiries, platform bans, travel restrictions, and criminal prosecutions that critics say blurred the line between judging and governing. He has treated journalists, politicians, and ordinary citizens with a severity he now appears unwilling to apply to himself or his inner circle. When a banker under investigation texts a sitting justice asking whether he should already be out of the country, and when that justice is linked to the editing of a nine-figure contract involving his spouse’s office, the appearance of impropriety is no longer subtle. It is glaring.
Conservative voices have warned for a long time that concentrating so much unchecked authority in one minister would eventually produce exactly this kind of crisis. The problem is not only the alleged private dealings. It is the institutional pattern: one justice acting as investigator, accuser, and protector of his own interests while the rest of the Court and the Senate hesitate. Edson Fachin and the other justices now face a simple test. Either they treat these facts with the same rigor Moraes has applied to others, or they confirm that the Court protects its own.
The Senate has the constitutional duty to judge ministers for crimes of responsibility. Continuing to treat impeachment as politically inconvenient is itself a political choice—one that further erodes public trust. Brazilians are not required to accept that a minister who lectures the country about the rule of law can remain above scrutiny when documents suggest conflicts of interest and possible obstruction.
Universities that employ Moraes as a professor, including USP, also owe the public a statement. Institutional silence in the face of these facts looks less like prudence and more like complicity.
None of this requires inventing new laws or extra-constitutional remedies. It requires applying existing ones without fear or favor. If the evidence does not support removal, a transparent process will show that. If it does, then Moraes should leave the Court—voluntarily or by impeachment. A judiciary that cannot police its most powerful member cannot credibly police anyone else.
The country does not need another cycle of denial followed by damage control. It needs the Senate and the Court to demonstrate that no one, not even a Supreme Court justice, sits above the Constitution.
Source: Pronouncement by Guilherme Cunha Pereira, president of Gazeta do Povo (Opinião na Mesa), based on Federal Police report findings made public in early September 2026.
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