By Ricardo Brito and Luciana Magalhaes
BRASILIA, May 14 (Reuters) – Allies of Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro scrambled on Thursday to play down ties to a jailed banker that threatened his odds in a narrowly contested October presidential election.
Aides and members of Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party told Reuters they were caught flat-footed on Wednesday by the voice message published by news website The Intercept Brasil in which the senator urged Daniel Vorcaro, head of failed lender Banco Master, to resume funding for a film about his father.
As recently as March, Bolsonaro, the eldest son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, had denied any connection to the banker at the center of the Master scandal that has consumed the capital Brasilia.
Last week, he wore a T-shirt to a political event linking the Banco Master scandal to the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: “Master is from Lula.”
But after Wednesday’s report, the senator said he met Vorcaro in December 2024, and their exchanges involved a contract the banker stopped paying. He called it a case of “a son seeking investors for a private film about the history of his father.”
‘FLAVIO MADE A MISTAKE’
Bolsonaro’s allies struggled to explain the sudden reversal while minimizing its importance for the presidential election.
“Flavio made a mistake by not disclosing his relationship with Vorcaro beforehand,” said Congressman Alberto Fraga, deputy leader of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party in the lower house. Still, he insisted the senator had done nothing wrong and should press on with his campaign.
Rival presidential contenders on the right were less forgiving. Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema said on social media that the revelations were “unpardonable,” calling them a “slap in the face of respectable Brazilians.”
Recent polling has shown Senator Bolsonaro leading other conservatives by nearly 30 percentage points in the race and drawing even with Lula in a simulated second-round matchup.
Andrei Roman, head of pollster AtlasIntel, said on social media that Lula’s odds of reelection had “shot up” on the news.
Leonardo Barreto, a political analyst at Think Policy, said the crisis for Bolsonaro “embarrasses allies, breeds distrust among advisers and burns bridges with parts of the right wing.”
Brazilian financial markets tumbled on Wednesday as traders bet the revelations would hurt the odds of Bolsonaro winning election on what he calls a pro-business platform. Brazil’s currency and stock market recovered some of those losses on Thursday.
Last year, the Bolsonaro family threw its weight behind the production of an English-language film called “Dark Horse” about the career of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, now serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 election.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia and Luciana Magalhaes in Sao PauloEditing by Brad Haynes, Rod Nickel)
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