The president of the (Supreme Federal Court), minister, calculates how to get around what the court is currently experiencing without causing its isolation.
Until now, he has silently observed the ministers’ stances and, especially on issues involving the investigation and its developments, which have put the court under pressure.
Moraes came into focus after the newspaper O Globo revealed that his wife’s law firm, Viviane Barci, had a monthly fee to defend Master, which would have yielded R$129 million if the bank had not been liquidated. According to the newspaper, the minister also tried to intercede on behalf of the financial institution with the president of the Central Bank, .
In Toffoli’s case, the questions involve a jet to Lima together with the lawyer of a Master director to watch a football game, his actions at the head of the case, such as the order for a confrontation understood as pressure on the Central Bank, and family business.
A Sheet revealed, for example, that companies linked to Toffoli’s relatives, an investment fund connected to the web used by the bank to perpetrate the fraud. The STF did not comment on the cases.
The impasse experienced by Fachin revolves around how to establish an institutional position in favor of ethics, which he said was a priority in his inauguration speech as president of the court, without this seeming like a provocation to his colleagues and resulting in an internal crisis.
The recess naturally cooled the debate on the code of conduct proposed by the minister, which had reached its peak in December, after the revelation of Toffoli’s trip on the jet.
At the time, Supreme Court ministers even defended an interruption of these discussions, so that the magistrates and the court itself would not be subject to a new wave of attacks just at the moment when the actions of the coup plot had been concluded.
Pendants
With the forced pause in articulation with his colleagues, Fachin used his shift at the STF to define what would be on the plenary agenda until March. Two sessions will be dedicated to judging judges and state prosecutors.
The minister’s assistants claim that the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence indicates that these bonuses will be overturned. They assess that new decisions in this regard could represent a nod to public opinion, which tends to contest the privileges in the remuneration of these categories.
Among the topics that will be judged is a law from Santa Catarina that compensates prosecutors who use their own vehicles and a rule from Paraíba that links judges’ allowances to 90.25% of the STF minister’s salary.
As both tend to be declared unconstitutional, the bet is that the ministers’ public votes, rejecting salary benefits, may contribute to restoring, to some extent, the image of the STF.
The inclusion on the agenda was published in the Diário de Justiça on January 12, amidst the repercussions of the Master case. Two days later, 42 search and seizure warrants were carried out in the second phase of the Compliance Zero operation, which targets suspicions surrounding the bank.
The text of the code of conduct should return to Fachin’s focus as soon as the court returns to work in February. He has the support of the presidents of the other higher courts and former presidents of the Supreme Court, but still faces internal resistance.
Inspired by the model of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, the minister’s draft provides, as one of the main points, the mandatory disclosure of funds received by ministers for participating in events and lectures.
The dean of the court, minister, has already minimized the attention given by society to the participation of magistrates in legal forums and seminars. “I think it’s nonsense,” he told reporters in December.
On that same occasion, Gilmar said he was in Moraes. He also stated that he was certain that Toffoli, during the flight to Peru with one of the lawyers in the Master case, only talked about football.
The president of the STF has signaled that he will insist on dialogue with colleagues regarding the code.
In his closing speech for the year 2025, the minister said that the topic gained “expressive substance” spontaneously and that the judiciary must be exercised “with technical rigor, sobriety and historical awareness”.
