By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s Central Bank said on Friday that it never recommended Banco de Brasília (BRB) buy credit portfolios from Banco Master, rejecting allegations that a senior supervisor pressured the state-controlled lender to absorb assets later found to be fraudulent. In a statement released Friday morning, the regulator said its supervision department, led by Ailton Aquino, identified inconsistencies, alerted authorities and ultimately proposed the liquidation of the Master conglomerate.
The Central Bank said Aquino voluntarily waived bank secrecy over his financial records, tax information and message exchanges with Paulo Henrique Costa, former BRB CEO, placing all material at the disposal of federal prosecutors and police. According to the statement, the supervisor’s mandate is limited to monitoring liquidity risks and applying prudential measures, while the responsibility for assessing the quality of acquired credit portfolios lies exclusively with the purchasing institution.
The denial followed a report published Friday by O Globo columnist Malu Gaspar, alleging that Aquino sent messages to Costa urging BRB to acquire additional consignado loan portfolios from Banco Master to help ease the private lender’s liquidity strains. The report said the messages were shown to BRB board members during a March 2025 meeting, influencing the approval of an exceptional waiver to proceed with the purchases.
At the time, BRB had already been acquiring Master-originated credit for months. According to people familiar with the discussions, the board initially considered suspending further purchases because the bank’s liquidity ratio had fallen below internal risk limits. Costa allegedly argued that the request reflected guidance from the regulator, leading the board to unanimously authorize a 15-day waiver for the acquisition of R$ 270 million in assets. The messages themselves were not cited in the meeting minutes.
The episode gained new significance months later. In November 2025, federal police arrested Banco Master founder Daniel Vorcaro and six executives after investigators concluded that around R$ 12 billion in credit contracts transferred to BRB had been falsified. Shortly afterward, the Central Bank ordered the liquidation of Banco Master. Police data show that between July 2024 and October 2025, BRB transferred R$ 16.7 billion to Master, leaving the Brasília-based lender facing a projected R$ 4 billion capital shortfall.
In its statement released Friday, the Central Bank said it had warned Master about liquidity risks as early as November 2024 and that all subsequent actions — including referrals to prosecutors, preventive prudential measures applied to BRB and the proposal to liquidate Master — originated within Aquino’s supervision department. The regulator stressed that it never recommended the acquisition of fraudulent assets and reaffirmed that risk analysis remains the sole responsibility of each financial institution.
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