By Rodrigo Vianna
Organizações Globo – which in recent weeks has transformed itself, once again, into a kind of court of media inquisition, deciding who deserves or not to burn at the stake for maintaining proximity to banker Daniel Vorcaro – were generously benefited by money from the founder of Banco Master. In May 2024, Vorcaro was the main sponsor of an event organized in New York by the newspaper Valor Econômico, from Grupo Globo, which was attended by businesspeople, governors and various political leaders – among them, Cláudio Castro (PL-RJ) and Ronaldo Caiado (PSD-GO).
The Master’s logo appeared prominently on the banner, at the back of the stage where the debates were taking place, at the luxurious Hotel Plaza in New York, at the moment when the director of Editora Globo, Frederic Kachar, took the floor to open the event. Kachar made it clear that there was more between Globo and Vorcaro than money and sponsorship. Pay attention to the words used by the director of one of the branches of Organizações Globo:
“We are happy to have sponsors from companies that we admire and that I have the privilege of being friends with. Many thanks to Banco Master [sorri e aponta para a plateia, onde estava o então banqueiro] in the figure of its president Daniel Vorcaro, who presents today’s seminar”.
Next, the representative of the Marinho family also thanks Ricardo Magro, from Gulf Combustíveis, another sponsor of the New York event. Magro is considered the biggest tax evader in Brazil, and now lives in hiding in the United States. At the beginning of 2026, President Lula even suggested to the Trump government the extradition of the businessman, who owns the Refit Group and was the target of Operation Hidden Carbon, which investigates the relations between organized crime and the fuel sector.
The Globo event, therefore, had as sponsors a suspect of being part of the largest tax evasion and money laundering network in the country and a banker who is in prison for, among other things, maintaining a network of mafiosos to intimidate those who dared to challenge him.
Globo was not part of the zap group called “A Turma” by Vorcaro. But the 2024 event shows that Vorcaro, at that time, was part of the Globo group. All of this was revealed by the website Correio da Manhã, which showed the full video of the event broadcast by the newspaper Valor. Correio da Manhã calculates that the imprisoned banker’s sponsorship of an event like this by Organizações Globo “would not cost less than R$ 10 million”, that is, three months of the contract between the office of Viviane Barci, wife of minister Alexandre de Moraes, with Master.
The aforementioned contract would be an indication of an alleged “purchase of access” by Master with the STF minister. This is what Globo columnists and commentators say or insinuate, with one of them (Fernando Gabeira) even suggesting the closure of the Federal Supreme Court, which should burn at the stake of the global inquisition.
But does Globo – by hiding the media group’s pecuniary relations with Vorcaro and the Marinho family’s organic relations with those who protected the Master at the Central Bank (see below how Roberto Campos Neto became an executive of a Marinho family company) – have the independence to act as an inquisitor in this case? Why does Globo aim all its cannons at the STF and spare Campos Neto – who is now an employee of the Marinho family at Nubank?
Vorcaro, the thinker, friend of “Fred” Kachar from Globo
By paying for sponsorship at the Globo event, Vorcaro bought access to the wealthy elite. All under the blessings of the Marinho family.
The most delicious – and frightening – thing is to watch how Vorcaro addresses the cream of Brazilian capital at the event in New York. When he takes to the pulpit, he is heard as if he were a wise man, a winning businessman, authorized to pontificate about democracy and Brazilian institutions, even commenting on the effects of Lava Jato in the country. Little did I know that I was talking about a rope in a hanged man’s house: Globo still hasn’t strayed from the laundering of which it was a majority partner, helping to incense Sergio Moro and other scoundrels from Curitiba (the Marinho family, let’s remember, even handed out the “Judge who makes a difference” award to the magistrate suspected of araucárias).
In New York, it was Vorcaro who earned the Marinho family’s seal of approval: a banker who makes a difference. A friend of the powerful Kachar, a Globo executive famous for participating in tacky celebrations in which he assumed the role of DJ (journalists who attended such parties say that Kachar’s performance was poor), Vorcaro stood firmly on stage and said phrases like the ones I transcribe below:
“I was very honored by ‘Fred’s invitation. [jornal] Valor has been a bulwark for our nation, ‘Fred.’ Valor has been a reference and a guide for us Brazilians, with always accurate and impartial information. I congratulate ‘Fred’ and the entire team that I admire a lot – Lauro, Maria Fernanda, Álvaro, Malu and everyone else for whom I have enormous admiration.”
Next, he praises Brazilian democracy and praises the “legal security” provided by the Brazilian institutional design, arising from the 1988 Constitution:
“We had institutional crises, we went through Lava Jato, but we came out of it all stronger. If there is a democracy that was forged with iron and fire, it is Brazilian democracy. I believe that we have Three powers that are strong, complement each other, audit each other, and it is something that we have to beat our chest and be proud of. We do have legal security, this entire recent past shows how strong our democracy is and how much legal security we have in our country.”
Vorcaro thought that “legal security”, in the case of Master, would be built by guaranteeing access to the powers of the Republic and, of course, releasing a little money for Grupo Globo, because no one is made of iron.
Vorcaro, king of the box in Rio
Less than two years passed between him being treated as a wise man and a friend in New York… and then being chased away as a banker who corrupts institutions, helping with the script used to overthrow Xandão and release Bolsonaro.
Frederic Kacher, or “Fred” to those close to him, had such close relations with Vorcaro that publisher Globo and Master agreed to a partnership in the Rio Carnival box, at least between 2022 and 2024. Artists and influencers circulated there. Many wore carnival t-shirts that printed the logos of Quem magazine (publisher Globo) and O Globo, side by side with that of the Master bank.
An article published in the Rio newspaper, in February 2023, warned that Camarote Quem/O Globo had “been decorated in honor of Rio’s postcards”, and announced free mouth for food and drinks: “the idea is that people can eat, without hassle and without queues”. During the party, said the festive newspaper, “partner brands prepared treats to make the invited revelers even happier”. And finally it said that everything was paid for with “master sponsorship from Fit Combustíveis, Cedae, Banco Master”, among others.
Whoever pays for the treats has preference, of course! People who visited the box in those years say that Vorcaro acted as a host, like the real owner of the house in the Globo box.
Again, the question arises: is the STF minister drinking whiskey, under the patronage of Vorcaro in London, suspicious and questionable? Yes. But what can we say about a media group that helped build Vorcaro’s figure as someone respectable, opening the doors for him to move among the Brazilian elite – accepting that he sponsor events at the Rio Carnival and at luxury hotels in New York?
The prison banker and “Fred” from Globo apparently even had a romantic relationship with the same actress: they dated Monique Afradique. In the case of “Fred”, it was a public courtship, which took her around wealthy salons throughout Brazil. Vorcaro would have used the code name “Allan do TI” to hide Monique in his contact book, to which the PF had access.
All of this would be of an absolutely intimate nature, if it weren’t for one more indication that Vorcaro, the bandit banker, and “Fred”, the boss at Globo, frequented the same environments and had relationships with the same people.
It was Frederic Kachar, in fact, who transformed the controversial and hasty Diego Escosteguy into director of Época magazine, between 2015 and 2018. Known for having been one of the toughest lavajatistas in Moro’s glorious era, and for putting pressure on fellow journalists by demanding that they follow the same line of journalism engaged with the right, Escosteguy is now accused of something more serious: having received R$2 million reais, to publish articles favorable to Vorcaro on the website O Bastidor, which he created after leaving Organizações Globo.
Escosteguy denies that he is a corrupt journalist. And he says he received resources from Vorcaro as payment for advertising – all this on a site that appears to be a failure with the public but a master success in the commercial department.
Campos Neto and the Marinho family
The partnership between the Marinho family and banker Roberto Campos Neto is not just ideological. This perhaps explains why the former president of the BC has been spared from the Globo news about the Master case.
The Marinho family, whose media business grew exponentially under the patronage of the military dictatorship in which Campos Neto’s grandfather served, is a radical defender of privatizations, fierce fiscal adjustment, a new “pension reform” that punishes workers even more and total “autonomy” for the Central Bank. In all of this, Globo and Campos Neto are partners.
There is, however, an organic relationship, little exposed to the general public. After leaving the Central Bank, as a hero of Faria Lima, and wearing the yellow shirt when voting to show that he is a member of Bolsonarism, Campos Neto was hired as main executive of Nubank – an institution of the new financial generation, which is growing non-stop.
It turns out that the Marinho family is a declared partner of Nubank. In July 2024, discreetly, the market was informed in specialized press articles that Globo Ventures had acquired a stake in Nubank: it did not buy shares or make a capital contribution, but built the company on the basis of the exchange. In other words: Globo offered advertising space on TV, in exchange for a growing portion of shares in the digital bank. Nubank, for example, appeared prominently in dozens of commercials during the most expensive time in global advertising: the Jornal Nacional (JN) break.
Roberto Marinho Neto, CEO of Globo Ventures, defended the family’s commercial strategy, in an interview in which he stated, in July 2025: “the future will be brands capable of renewing strategies, testing hypotheses and investing in innovative partnerships”. Among the partnerships, Marinho Neto (known for being an enthusiastic Flamengo fan, to the point of chartering planes with friends to watch the team’s games abroad) cited the cases of Nubank and Quinto Andar as “two disruptive, innovative and admirable brands”.
There is no way to confirm whether one of Marinho Neto’s disruptive strategies was to suggest the name of Campos Neto to head Nubank, in July 2025. The former president of the Central Bank is today the main executive of the digital bank, which also hired another name from the BC: Otávio Damaso was director of Standards and Regulation at the BC and, after completing the mandatory quarantine, entered through Nubank’s revolving door, to take care of exactly the same area of regulation.
Now, Otávio Damaso coordinated the inspection at the BC precisely during the period in which the monetary authority did not seem to have seen anything unusual in Vorcaro’s actions, allowing him to obtain official registration to operate the Master – this after the banker visited the BC headquarters 24 times, during the Campos Neto administration – as shown in an exclusive report by ICL Noticias. In relation to Damaso, it must be said, there is no evidence of wrongdoing. But what remains is the impression of lenient regulation, to say the least.
What do we have here, in short?
1 – Campos Neto and his directors at the BC never bothered Vorcaro, allowing him to commit operational barbarities that led to the liquidation of Master (and the liquidation only occurred after Gabriel Galípolo took over the BC), leaving a trail of destruction in public pension funds and losses for thousands of investors.
2 – Campos Neto and one of his directors (precisely the Director of Standards and Regulation), upon leaving BC, took refuge under the umbrella of Nubank – which was one of the banks to sell Master papers (CDBs with non-standard rates).
3 – Globo, a partner of Nubank, tries to transform the Master scandal (which grew under the leadership of Campos Neto at BC, and even sponsored actions by Globo itself), into a “STF scandal”. The strategy fits like a glove for the Bolsonarists and their allies in Faria Lima.
4- By acting like this, in practice, Globo helps to shield an executive who works in a Marinho family company: the Bolsonarist Campos Neto.
Organizações Globo seem so concerned about hiding this web of relationships that this Wednesday (11) they published a “vaccine” in the form of an “investigation”, on the blog of a local journalist. The news is that Planalto would be trying to “concentrate the focus of the crisis on the actions of the Central Bank during Campos Neto’s administration”.
Now, it is not Planalto that can take the case to Campos Neto’s lap, but reality. Banco Master and its collapse only existed because a member of Bolsonarism, who is now an employee of the Marinho family as an executive at Nubank, allowed this to happen.
More than that: Vorcaro only gained notoriety and space among the Brazilian elite because he had the endorsement of the Marinho family, by sponsoring/presenting an event in New York and by supporting part of the Globo box in Sapucaí.
If I needed to draw, here is the complete picture.
