The group linked to União Brasil migrated from Rioprevidência to the Itaguaí fund and paid more than a billion reais to Banco Master

In Itaguaí, a municipality in Baixada Fluminense, the acquisitions took place just two weeks after lawyer Fernanda Pereira da Silva Machado took over as president of the fund. Previously, she participated in the accreditation of Banco Master by Rioprevidência, which allowed the state institute to invest in the bank’s shares. She was appointed head of internal control of Rioprevidência at the start of the administration of Deivis Marcon Antunes, who took over the state institute with party support in July 2023.

Rioprevidência documents show that a lawyer resigned from the state institute on June 12, 2024, the same day she was named president of Itaprevi. The following week, Fernanda participated in the meeting of the investment committee of the Itaguaí fund, which approved contributions “from registered financial institutions.” The institute then made two purchases of financial letters from Master, on June 28 and July 3, for a total amount of 60 million reais.

During the same period, Rioprevidência made the last of its 970 million reais contributions to the Master, which began in October 2023. At the time, Fernanda, still at Rioprevidência, approved an opinion that the Master “complies with the established requirements” to receive the contributions, which would be “the exclusive responsibility of the investment director.”

The position was occupied by Euchério Lerner Rodrigues, appointed to Rioprevidência the same day the Master requested his accreditation. An investigation by the Court of State Auditors (TCE) called the proximity between the appointments and contributions a “remarkable coincidence”.

In December 2024, as suspicions grew about the possibility of Master’s bankruptcy, the Itaguaí pension board held a meeting in which it expressed concern about the “critical situation to the disadvantage of the bank”, which endangered the investment. According to the minutes of the meeting, the chairman of Itaprevi claimed that Master’s stock purchases took place in a short period of time due to a tight deadline “to achieve the investment objective.”

Fernanda also requested that “the response from Rioprevidência,” the same institution in which she had worked, and which was also the target of questions, be included in the minutes.

Sought by GLOBO, the lawyer said that she did not intervene in the decision of the Itaguaí fund to buy shares in Banco Master and that the procedure began before its management. She also said she had ordered an internal investigation at Itaprevi against a server who, between 2018 and 2021, had already contributed to funds linked to Master’s owner, Daniel Vorcaro.

Last month, Fernanda also contacted the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) to request an investigation against the Central Bank for its role in the Banco Master affair. According to the lawyer, British Columbia committed “systemic oversight failures” that prompted pension funds to buy Master’s shares.

— None of this would happen without a silent pact of omission, without a regulatory blackout. We do not accept the absurd narrative that the small technical staff of the RPPS (pension plans) should have been more perceptive than hundreds of analysts in British Columbia — he said.

In addition to Euchério and Fernanda, the president of Rioprevidência, Deivis Antunes, has surrounded himself with other allies of the state fund. At least three people appointed by Deivis to positions of trust – director Alcione Soares, head of legal support Carlos Felipe Lima and chief of staff Camilla dos Santos – had previously worked with him at another pension fund, Refer, focused on the railway sector.