Daniel Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, a financial institution whose creation was blocked by both the Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer administrations, but which was granted its charter by Brazil’s Central Bank under President Jair Bolsonaro. Shortly after Bolsonaro left office, it declared bankruptcy after an estimated $2.4 billion was embezzled through sales of toxic assets to small investors and retirement funds. Flávio Bolsonaro was caught on audio, one day before Vorcaro’s arrest last year, asking for the remaining $12 million he had requested. Initially denying everything, he later admitted to receiving $12 million of a promised secret donation of $24 million from Vorcaro, which was sent to his brother Eduardo’s lawyer’s office in Texas so that some of it could be used on a failed biopic project about their father. Since his arrest, more and more information has come out, however, about Vorcaro holding sex parties with trafficked women and some of the most powerful business and right-wing political elites in Brazil. Chat messages revealing conversations showing many of the women appear to be trafficked, young, war refugees have led to comparisons of Vorcaro with Jeffrey Epstein. -Ed
by Nina Lemos
“Slaves, “sluts”, “preschoolers” Those were the words used to describe the women who were part of a prostitution ring allegedly run by jailed banking fraudster Daniel Vorcaro and his accomplices. The group also reportedly had a preference for war refugees, women in extreme states of vulnerability, who were sexually exploited by Vorcaro and his gang.
upreme Court Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, a Bolsonaro nominee (l) and jailed banking fraudster Daniel Vorcaro (r). Leaked chat messages reveal strong suspicion that Marques attended sex parties with trafficked war refugees arranged by Vorcaro
The horrifying details were published this week in a UOL report that revealed messages suggesting Vorcaro and the elite cronies which he referred to as his “brothers” may have been engaged in human trafficking, sexual exploitation and other extremely serious crimes, including pedophilia. What else could it mean for girls to be referred to as “preschoolers”? In one exchange, Vorcaro himself appears worried about the girls’ ages. “’Mucilon’ is very young, I’m worried,” he writes.
The messages also show that the group exploited war refugees from Ukraine and Russia. In conversations with event promoter Diogo Batista, Vorcaro’s partner in the scheme, exchanges like this one appear: “There’s a Ukrainian left over here, cute one. Should we wage war in Brazil?” Vorcaro replies: “Yes! In this war, there has to be a Ukrainian left over for me.”
This appears to be a common fetish on the far right. In 2022, then lawmaker Arthur do Val, known as “Mamãe Falei,” traveled to the Ukrainian border and, in audio messages sent to friends, said the women there were “easy because they’re poor.”
It bears repeating: these women were in a position of maximum vulnerability, as refugees. Diogo and Vorcaro discuss, for example, a 19 year old girl who had no way to get back home and who had spoken with her mother about the bombings in her country. What they did is cruel and criminal.
This would be horrifying no matter who it involved. But it gets even worse when we remember that Vorcaro was supplying women to prominent Brazilian political figures who took part in his parties. How many officials with influence over this country’s decisions knew about the slaves, the “preschoolers,” the refugees?
Brazil’s Own Epstein?
Vorcaro appears to have tried to become a kind of Brazilian Jeffrey Epstein. The American financier, who died in prison in 2019, ran a network of sexual exploitation and trafficking of women for decades with impunity. (The first accusation against him, notably, dates back to 1996.) Among those accused of attending parties with minors were extremely powerful men, including Prince Andrew, who lost all his royal titles over it, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Brazil’s own Epstein also appears to have supplied women to powerful officials, as we now know. This week, UOL also obtained messages in which Vorcaro’s accomplice says that, at one of the parties, a “Justice” was “in a room with five girls.” Other messages, sent days later, show Vorcaro’s partner demanding payment for a girl who “stayed with Kassio.” The Federal Police is treating the case as though the “Justice” in question is Kassio Nunes Marques, a Federal Supreme Court justice. Marques, a Jair Bolsonaro nominee, also happens to currently preside over Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, right in the middle of the most fraught election in Brazil’s history. It sounds like something out of a movie.
If we lived in a society that took crimes against women seriously, Kassio Nunes would have already been removed from both the Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court until the investigation concluded. Has it been proven that he committed crimes? No. But it is essential to rigorously investigate whether he made use of these enslaved women’s “services,” whether the “five girls” in question were minors, and so on. In truth, in a genuinely serious country, he would have stepped down from all his posts himself until the case was fully investigated.
That is not what is going to happen. Quite the opposite. Kassio Nunes appears to be trying every possible way to escape investigation, and Flávio Bolsonaro’s election looks like his lifeboat. In recent days, crucial days for the campaign, he has been censoring, for example, the WhatsApp group Exército de Lula (”Lula’s Army”), a group of Lula supporters with millions of members. His unequal treatment of the two campaigns is obvious. Trying to escape complicity, at minimum, in the sexual crimes against women committed by Vorcaro and his gang is not the only reason for his clear political preference, but it is probably one of them.
Beyond all the sordid details, what makes the Epstein case so infuriating is that his network of exploiting vulnerable girls, many of them poor children recruited outside schools, operated with impunity for decades, with the complicity of powerful people.
We cannot let the same thing happen in Brazil, repeating history as farce. The Federal Police investigation needs to continue, and it needs to expose every powerful figure connected to these extremely serious crimes, whoever they may be. And, of course, whoever committed these crimes needs to pay for them, regardless of who wins the election.
Nina Lemos is a Journalist and writer who lives in Berlin. She has written about sexism and feminism since the 1990s, when she co-founded the group 02 Neurônio. She was one of the founders of TPM magazine and has worked as a columnist for publications including Folha de S. Paulo, UOL, and DW Brasil.
This article originally appeared in ICL Notícias, has been translated by Panamerican Dispatch with express consent from the editor, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.