Brazil’s top court saved the country’s young democracy. Now it is strangling it through corruption

Published on: Sep 11, 2026, 17:39:49 IST

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When Jair Bolsonaro plotted a coup after losing his bid for re-election in 2022, it was Brazil’s Supreme Court that held him to account. In the face of constant threats, including from Donald Trump, the justices proceeded calmly with prosecuting the populist former president, handing him a 27-year sentence in September 2025. Most Brazilians cheered that their young democracy was saved.

Now, as a general election approaches on October 4th, democracy’s defenders have become a threat. The Supreme Court is at the centre of an ugly, ever-expanding corruption scandal. In the middle is the justice who oversaw Mr Bolsonaro’s prosecution, Alexandre de Moraes.

Mr Moraes made several questionable decisions when he went after Mr Bolsonaro. He took down social-media accounts, especially of bolsonaristas, that he claimed threatened the Supreme Court. The “fake-news inquiry”, as the Brazilian press dubbed it, continues to this day and remains confidential, so it is impossible to know how many accounts Mr Moraes has censored or why.

Abuse has become more common: Mr Moraes has used the probe to shield himself and his colleagues from allegations of impropriety, including by going after tax officials and journalists’ sources. Mr Moraes was also compromised in the case because of his roles as victim, prosecutor and judge. Mr Bolsonaro’s underlings planned to assassinate the justice, yet he oversaw the collection of evidence against them and delivered a guilty ruling.

At the time much of Brazilian society brushed these concerns aside in the face of the greater threat. But now Mr Moraes is under scrutiny once again. Last November Brazil’s central bank shut down a lender, Banco Master, run by a playboy called Daniel Vorcaro. All the signs are that Mr Vorcaro’s bank was a Ponzi scheme with an influence-peddling operation attached. He invited politicians to lavish parties with sex-workers and feted several Supreme Court members, including Mr Moraes.

Perdeu, playboy

Since the bank’s collapse, investigators have found worrying links between Mr Moraes and Mr Vorcaro. Mr Moraes’s wife, who is a lawyer, had been hired by Mr Vorcaro to represent the bank on an unusually vague and expensive contract. On September 1st Brazil’s federal police published a report which revealed a second draft contract giving Ms Moraes’s law firm the right to use a private jet and helicopter owned by Mr Vorcaro. Mr Moraes apparently also gave advice to Mr Vorcaro using a feature on WhatsApp in which messages disappear after they are read. The frequency of these messages increased shortly before Mr Vorcaro was arrested trying to flee the country, raising fears about what kind of advice Mr Moraes was giving the fraudster. Mr Moraes denies any wrongdoing.

That a powerful Supreme Court justice has any links at all with Brazil’s biggest fraudster is disappointing. Worse is Mr Moraes’s response. When connections between the two men first emerged, the court’s upright president, Edson Fachin, proposed adopting an ethics code which would require judges to account for outside earnings, among other proposals. Mr Moraes scoffed at the idea.

Then, on September 3rd, Mr Moraes requested that his fellow justice, André Mendonça, who is leading the Banco Master case, be criminally prosecuted under the “fake-news inquiry”. He accused Mr Mendonça of abusing his authority by publishing messages between him and Mr Vorcaro, and said the judge, who was appointed by Mr Bolsonaro, was politically motivated and deliberately selective. Mr Fachin threw out the request and said the “fake-news inquiry” should be closed.

Mr Moraes may have a point. Mr Mendonça has not yet published evidence against other justices who also had dealings with Mr Vorcaro. The federal police have accused Mr Mendonça of meddling in the collection of evidence. On September 8th he tried to suspend the head of the federal police and bar the production of intelligence reports on judges. Yet in 2020, when Mr Mendonça was serving as Mr Bolsonaro’s justice minister, he oversaw the compilation of a dossier on hundreds of police officers and academics that Mr Bolsonaro considered enemies.

How democracies die

Dysfunction on the bench is boosting Mr Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress, who are promising to impeach Supreme Court justices after the election and pardon the former president. Mr Mendonça’s procedural missteps and Mr Moraes’s brazen attempts to shield himself could also provide legal justification to shut down the entire Banco Master investigation. That would not only benefit Mr Moraes and some of his colleagues, but also dozens of politicians with links to the fraudster. One would be Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of Mr Bolsonaro and the right’s leading candidate for the presidency. Having claimed he had never met the man, Flávio was caught out in May after audio messages leaked in which he can be heard asking Mr Vorcaro for millions of dollars.

The biggest loser would be Brazil’s democracy. Brazilians are tired of the corruption scandals that tarnish their political class every few years. They used to trust their top court, which has sent dozens of politicians to jail for graft. Now that trust is fraying. This is the tragedy of Brazil: corruption at the heart of its institutions could undermine trust in democracy more than Mr Bolsonaro ever did.

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