Banco Master Paid R$33 Million to Former Gilmar Mendes Adviser, Audit Shows
By Hotspotnews
An internal audit commissioned by Banco de Brasília (BRB) and recovered by Brazil’s Federal Police documented that Banco Master paid R$33 million in 2024 to the law firm of Dalide Corrêa. The same document recorded a larger payment of R$40 million that year to the firm of Viviane Barci de Moraes. Together these two contracts accounted for a substantial share of Master’s legal spending, which rose from R$76 million in 2023 to R$215 million in 2024. The audit questioned whether the scale of the outlays was consistent with the bank’s usual legal costs.
Dalide Corrêa previously served as an adviser in the office of Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes and later as director-general of the Instituto Brasiliense de Direito Público (IDP), an institution co-founded by Mendes. Internal messages among Banco Master executives, also obtained by the Federal Police, described her as a “direct channel to the STF.” The messages contained no reference to Mendes or any other sitting justice by name.
There is a documented money trail from Banco Master to Corrêa’s firm, Alves Corrêa & Veríssimo Advocacia. No public document released so far shows those funds leaving the firm and reaching Mendes, his family or the IDP. Corrêa issued a statement denying that she had ever represented Banco Master before the Supreme Court or approached any minister on the bank’s behalf. People close to her said the work related to legal services provided to institutions that Master later acquired.
When contacted through the Supreme Court’s press office, Mendes declined to comment. Associates said he had distanced himself from Corrêa after she left the IDP and that the two no longer maintain a close relationship. The Federal Police have not issued a finding on the legality of the contracts and have not opened specific inquiries into the justices themselves.
The payments form part of a wider examination of Banco Master’s dealings with BRB and of large transfers made while the bank faced regulatory and judicial scrutiny. Daniel Vorcaro, the bank’s controlling shareholder, is under investigation in the case known as Operação Compliance Zero. Separate earlier reports documented other Master flows, including transfers to companies whose principals had social contact with Mendes, but those transactions are distinct from the 2024 legal-fee payments.
Sources: Estadão report of 17 September 2026 based on the BRB audit recovered by the Federal Police; public statement issued by Dalide Corrêa; comments attributed to Gilmar Mendes through associates after he declined an official response.
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