After the portal The Intercept Brasil, the senator (-RJ) admitted to having negotiated with the banker, from , payments to finance a film about his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
Before the publication of the report, however, Flávio Bolsonaro maintained a discourse of association between the scandal involving Master, the left and the left.
Last weekend, during a pre-campaign event in Santa Catarina, the presidential candidate wore a t-shirt with the inscription “The Pix is from Bolsonaro; the Master is from”.
The senator had also been defending the establishment of a Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) in Congress to investigate the scandal surrounding Vorcaro.
‘Yes, I had a contract’
According to a report by The Intercept Brasil, Daniel Vorcaro would have transferred R$61 million to finance the Dark Horse production, which has not yet been released. The total agreed transfer would be US$24 million, equivalent to around R$134 million at the time.
Given the delays in the remaining payments, Flávio would have sent messages to Vorcaro demanding release.
The banker is in prison, accused of having commanded billion-dollar fraud at Banco Master, an institution liquidated by the Central Bank in November. He is currently negotiating a plea bargain.
After revealing the dialogues, Flávio said that it was “private sponsorship for a private film”.
“It is necessary to separate the innocent from the criminals. In our case, what happened was a son, seeking private sponsorship for a private film about his own father’s story”, said Flávio in a note released on Wednesday (13).
In a video, the senator also stated that he met Daniel Vorcaro in December 2024, when there were still no accusations against the banker, and when Jair Bolsonaro’s government had already ended.
“It turns out that, as time went by, he simply stopped honoring the installments of the contract. Yes, he had a contract,” he said in the message.
Flávio also stated that he did not offer anything in exchange for the financing. “I did not offer advantages in return. I did not promote private meetings outside the agenda. I did not broker business with the government. I did not receive money or any advantage. This is very different from the spurious relations between the Lula government and its representatives with Vorcaro,” he said.
The senator also once again demanded the installation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate the suspicions involving Vorcaro: “Master Já’s CPI.”
‘This scheme is the face of the left’
The statement, however, contradicts recent statements by Flávio Bolsonaro himself about his relationship with Vorcaro.
On Wednesday itself, before the publication of The Intercept’s report, the senator was questioned in person by the portal about Vorcaro’s financing of the film, and replied: “Where did you get that information from? It’s a lie.”
Flávio had already denied connections between his family and the far right with Vorcaro several times, going so far as to say that this was a “false narrative that Lula has created” in an interview that he reposted on his social networks on March 23 of this year.
“We defend Banco Master’s CPI, we have already signed an impeachment of a minister, we are seeing an investigation progress and showing that Lula’s circle, very close to him, especially in Bahia, sir, sir, these people are the ones at the heart of the beginning of this great robbery scheme that is disgusting the entire country”, he says in the video, denying that Daniel Vorcaro’s accusation could reach the right.
“Bahian lulopetismo is in the DNA of the Master case. There’s no way to even try to hide it, this scheme is the face of the left,” he stated.
The accusations made by the senator in relation to Wagner and Costa are mainly related to the sale by Master of , a type of credit card with a direct discount on the salaries of public employees and retirees.
According to information sent by the Federal Revenue to the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) that investigates organized crime, between 2022 and 2024, Master recorded revenue of R$2.4 billion from the sale of CredCesta’s payroll portfolio, against R$1.9 billion in revenue generated by the same operations.
These differences could indicate that Daniel Vorcaro’s bank was betting on the premium it could earn from the resale of these portfolios.
Rui Costa, former minister of the Civil House, was the governor of Bahia at the time of the privatization of the state-owned Ebal, manager of the Cesta do Povo supermarkets and which also included CredCesta. Jaques Wagner (PT-BA), current leader of the government in the Senate, was the state’s Secretary of Economic Development in 2018.
And according to the accusations made by Flávio Bolsonaro and his supporters, Costa and Wagner were among those who helped structure the payroll model and favored the bank’s expansion.
Information revealed by Metrópoles also indicates that Jaques Wagner’s daughter-in-law’s company maintained a contract with Banco Master for three years and received payments from the institution between 2022 and 2025.
Costa claims that he only sold a loss-making state business to reduce public losses, denies irregularities and speaks of “misinformation”.
Wagner denies any involvement, saying that he did not participate in negotiations or intercede for companies or contracts. “When we received the government in Bahia, there was a state-owned supermarket chain with an annual loss of R$80 million. When Rui Costa was governor, I was Secretary of Economic Development, and I said: ‘let’s privatize this'”, he stated in an interview with Metrópoles.
The senator said that, after the privatization process, he did not participate in subsequent negotiations. He also stated that the involvement of his daughter-in-law’s company with the Master occurred later and was restricted to providing services to the bank.
‘PT didn’t want to investigate’
In several other posts on his social networks, Flávio Bolsonaro associated the Master case with the PT, President Lula and the left.
“The Lulapetistas have a lot to explain. They are masters of strange and suspicious schemes,” he said on March 25.
In all his statements, Flávio demanded the establishment of a CPI to investigate the case.
In a video posted on his Instagram on May 9, the senator goes so far as to say that President Lula may even say publicly that he is in favor of the parliamentary commission, but in fact “the PT was against the CPI”.
“The PT deputies didn’t sign. But now we can’t hold back any longer. Here comes the theater”, he says. “And I ask you: Is the PT against the CPI because it involves politicians from Bahia who they have controlled for more than 20 years? Or is it because the family of Jaques Wagner, leader of the PT, received 11 million in a company linked to the case?”
“The truth is simple, the PT didn’t want to investigate, they tried to stop it, but they couldn’t”, says the senator.
In a post on May 10, Flávio once again says that the Banco Master scandal “is Lula’s”:
“Banco Master belongs to Lula. The INSS scandal belongs to Lula, just as Mensalão belonged to Lula, Petrolão belonged to Lula”, he said.
‘It’s nowhere near right’
When it was reported, in March this year, that Vorcaro’s brother-in-law – pastor Fabiano Zettel – had made a donation of R$3 million to Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, Flávio told CNN that this happened “without any connection, without any compensation, without any personal contact, even”.
“This Banco Master account is far from being close to the right,” said the senator.
During the interview, Flávio Bolsonaro also criticized the current government, mentioning meetings that, according to him, were not initially public.
“What we have seen, in fact, are the agendas that were made with Lula, which were not public, they only became public later, on several occasions, including with the presence of the president of the Central Bank, Galípolo”, he stated.
The speech is a reference to a meeting between President Lula and Vorcaro at Palácio do Planalto, in December 2024, not recorded on the official agenda.
The meeting took place in Lula’s office and lasted around an hour and a half, according to Metrópoles.
Two days before the revelation about Vorcaro’s donations to Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign, Flávio participated in a pre-campaign event in João Pessoa, Paraíba, two days earlier, in which he classified the case as a “huge theft scheme that is disgusting the entire country”.
The senator once again said that President Lula has propagated a “false narrative” to link the scandal to opposition parliamentarians and cite the involvement of Jacques Wagner and Rui Costa.
Flávio Bolsonaro also commented on the expectation of a possible plea bargain agreement for Daniel Vorcaro.
“Let’s hope to see that the investigations that are taking place seriously and with an impartial federal police, finally, the truth can come to light. We hope that Daniel Vorcaro will make his statement and hand over everything he knows,” he said.
