Who is Daniel Vorcaro

Background and education

Daniel Bueno Vorcaro was born on October 6, 1983, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. He holds an economics degree from Ibmec and completed an MBA in finance in 2007. From 2004, he worked in real estate at family companies (Wikipédia).

How Banco Master began

Master grew out of an old institution: Máxima Corretora, a brokerage founded in 1974 that became Banco Máxima in 1990 (Wikipédia). In 2018, Vorcaro bought an option to take control of the bank. The Central Bank approved the transfer in 2019, and in 2021 the bank was renamed Banco Master (Wikipédia).

It grew fast. Between 2019 and 2024, its equity rose from R$200 million to R$4.7 billion, and its loan book from R$1.4 billion to R$40 billion (Wikipédia). Much of the money came from CDs paying 120%, 140% and even 160% of the CDI benchmark rate, heavily promoted on investment platforms (CNN Brasil). In February 2024, the group bought Will Bank (Wikipédia).

Outside the bank, Vorcaro invested in the drugmaker Biomm, the retailer Veste (formerly Restoque) and, in 2023, in the company that owns the Atlético Mineiro football club (Wikipédia).

The bank's full story is in What happened to Banco Master.

Ties to power

News reports and Federal Police reports have shown contacts between Vorcaro and politicians from different parties and officials from all three branches of government. On December 4, 2024, for example, he met President Lula, Guido Mantega and Gabriel Galípolo. Lula confirmed the meeting and said he treated the matter as a technical issue for the Central Bank (Wikipédia).

The most talked-about cases have their own pages: Vorcaro and Moraes, Vorcaro, Flávio Bolsonaro and Dark Horse and Who's who.

Arrests and investigation

• November 17, 2025: arrested by the Federal Police at Guarulhos Airport (São Paulo) as he was preparing to travel abroad (CNN Brasil).
• November 18, 2025: the Federal Police launches Operation Compliance Zero, and the Central Bank liquidates Master (Wikipédia).
• November 28, 2025: released by order of the TRF-1 federal appeals court, with an electronic ankle monitor (CNN Brasil).
• February 2026: summoned by the congressional inquiry into the INSS social security agency, he did not appear after the Supreme Court ruled his attendance optional (Wikipédia).
• March 4, 2026: arrested again, by order of Justice André Mendonça, in phase 3 of the operation (Jornal do Brasil, Agência Pública).

All phases of the investigation are in Operation Compliance Zero.

The plea deal attempt

Vorcaro signed an agreement to negotiate a plea deal in March 2026, but the Federal Police and the Prosecutor General's Office rejected the proposals he submitted. Prosecutors said they would not negotiate another one (Poder360, Gazetaweb). The details are in Vorcaro's plea deal.

Where he stands now

Vorcaro remains in pretrial detention, which is not a conviction. On September 18, 2026, his lawyers asked the president of the Supreme Court, Edson Fachin, to revoke the detention. According to the lawyers, he has been held for more than six months without formal charges (Jornal de Brasília). On October 8, they asked Fachin to let Mendonça rule on the request and said he has been “held for more than eight months, without being indicted and without criminal charges”; that count is the defense's, since the current pretrial detention began on March 4 (Folha de Pernambuco / O Globo). On October 15, testifying to the Federal Police about BRB, Vorcaro denied fraud and again asked to be released (Itatiaia).

What his lawyers say

In a statement on September 25, 2026, his lawyers said they do not recognize the information about alleged conversations published by the press. They said the material is selective, fragmented and taken out of context, and that it comes from illegal leaks of sealed data (Gazeta do Povo, Metrópoles).

Frequently asked questions