Senators file impeachment request against Toffoli for handling the Master Case

Senators Magno Malta (PL-ES), Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF) and Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) filed this Wednesday, 14th, in the Federal Senate, a request for impeachment against minister Dias Toffoli, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), on charges of criminal responsibility in the conduct of the so-called “Master Bank Case”.

The complaint was forwarded to the president of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre. Parliamentarians ask him to receive the complaint, initiate the impeachment process, form a special commission and determine the hearing of witnesses, in addition to requesting documents from the STF, the Central Bank (BC), the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), the Federal Comptroller General (CGU) and the Financial Activities Control Council (Coaf).

According to the senators, Toffoli would have acted in an objective situation of suspicion and conflict of interest when conducting investigations and decisions in the investigation investigating fraud involving Banco Master, an institution that ended up being liquidated by the BC.

When contacted, Minister Dias Toffoli did not respond to the report. The space remains open.

In the report, Girão said that the Banco Master case is an unprecedented scandal and that Toffoli made any independent investigation unfeasible by “concentrating everything in his hands”. “There is only one institutional path: the Federal Senate, through impeachment. It is necessary to listen to society’s outcry, break the paralysis, put the issue on the agenda and vote. The Senate cannot omit itself. Now is the time for Parliament to fulfill its role”, he stated.

One of the main facts highlighted in the complaint is a trip made by Toffoli to Lima, Peru, in November 2025, on a businessman’s private aircraft, in the company of a lawyer who is part of the defense of one of those investigated in the Banco Master investigation, a process that was under the minister’s own report in the STF.

For the senators, the episode constitutes a very serious factual situation. “Such extra-procedural, intimate and unofficial contact, with a representative of one of the parties, violates the duty to maintain an equivalent distance between the parties and raises concrete doubts about their neutrality”, they state.

The complaint also cites Toffoli’s decision to order, during the Judiciary’s recess, a confrontation between the controller of Banco Master, the then president of BRB and a director of the Central Bank. The senators maintain that the measure contradicted unanimous technical statements from the BC and the PGR.

As Estadão showed, the initiative, taken without provocation by the Federal Police, occurred at a time considered inappropriate in the investigation and would characterize the production of evidence by the minister himself, which could compromise the impartiality of the process.

The BC sent a letter to the STF questioning the urgency of the investigation and warning of procedural risks, while the PGR asked for the measure to be suspended as it considered it “premature”.

Even so, Toffoli initially maintained the decision and, according to the senators, only revoked it after strong negative repercussions, replacing the confrontation with individual hearings conducted by the Federal Police (PF).

“The repeal of the act does not eliminate the crime of responsibility, whose damage is institutional and is consummated with the practice of the deviant act”, state the senators.

Another highlighted point is the determination that an assistant judge from Toffoli monitor statements taken by the Federal Police. According to the document, the measure created invasive judicial control over the investigation, without legal provision, generating public friction between the PF and the STF and violating the functional separation between the Powers.

The request also points out possible financial links between the structure investigated in the Banco Master case and companies linked to the minister’s family.

As Estadão showed, the brothers of Dias Toffoli’s minister gave a million-dollar stake in the Tayaya resort, in Ribeirão Claro, Paraná, to Arleen Fundo de Investimentos, from Reag Investimentos, investigated for harboring webs of funds linked to Banco Master and suspected of billion-dollar tax evasion in the fuel market.

The senators point out that the fund, linked to the web under investigation, invested R$4.3 million in this resort and also participated in a real estate project with a cousin of the minister.

“Such circumstances transcend the mere suspicion of partiality to constitute a hypothesis of impediment due to a conflict of interests of a patrimonial nature, giving objective and extremely serious contours to the violation of the duties of impartiality and decorum”, argue the senators.

New phase of Operation Compliance Zero

One of the points of the impeachment request against Dias Toffoli was also the minister’s decision to determine that all materials seized in the new phase of Operation Compliance Zero, launched this Wednesday, 14th, be sealed and kept in the direct custody of the Federal Supreme Court, and not sent to the Federal Police for examination.

According to the document, the order broke the usual procedure of criminal investigations, in which the seized goods and devices are sent to the PF for extraction, analysis and preservation of the chain of custody. For the senators, the measure concentrated control of the evidence in the hands of the case’s own rapporteur, creating a risk to the integrity of the investigation and violating legal evidence preservation protocols.

In a statement released around 4 pm, a few hours after the decision became public, Dias Toffoli’s office stated that the order was intended to “preservation of evidence”.

“Minister Dias Toffoli’s office clarifies that the immediate precaution is intended to preserve the evidence collected by the police authority and will be duly examined by the competent authorities,” said the statement.

In a second position, released at 6 pm, the office detailed that, while the materials were not yet physically delivered to the Supreme Court, it would be up to the authorities responsible for the operation to guarantee the technical conditions of custody.

“Given that the seized materials have not yet been forwarded to this Supreme Court, I clarify that for the custody of the devices and their respective telematic materials, it is necessary that the custodian authorities keep them electrically charged and in a mode uncoupled from the telephone and Wi-Fi networks, for the proper preservation of their content and timely extraction and inspection by the authority in charge. This responsibility lies with the executors of the order issued.”