Brazil's Top Court Unsealed the File on Flávio Bolsonaro. It Says a Disgraced Banker Paid $12 Million for a Movie About His Father.

SÃO PAULO — Brazil's Supreme Court unsealed documents late Thursday showing that Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the leading challenger to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion over 61 million reais, about $12 million, that he received from a banker at the center of the country's biggest financial scandal. The money was meant to finance an unreleased film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, titled "The Dark Horse."

The timing could hardly be worse for the senator. The first round of Brazil's presidential election is Oct. 4, and polls have shown him locked in a tight race with Lula. The investigation centers on whether the Bolsonaro family misused the funds and whether the payments were properly reported to Brazilian authorities.

The banker, Daniel Vorcaro, was arrested in March. He is accused of defrauding many of Banco Master's 800,000 clients, including several state pension funds, out of hundreds of millions of dollars by steering them into questionable investments. Brazil's Central Bank shut the bank down in November; its assets had topped $16 billion. The scandal has since swept up officials across the political spectrum.

The allegations about the film first surfaced in May. Flávio Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, and on Friday, at a campaign stop in the Amazonian city of Manaus, he said he had simply been seeking private investment for the project. "It is very positive that the documents are unsealed," he told journalists. "I want transparency in everything. I will only confirm what I always said. There's nothing wrong about the movie."

The unsealed file also reaches into the United States. One document alleges that Eduardo Bolsonaro, the senator's brother, who lives in Texas, "guided how the resources (sent by Vorcaro) could be managed in the United States." Prosecutors suspect the film money was used to cover Eduardo Bolsonaro's expenses and to promote his brother's political agenda to the Trump administration. Eduardo Bolsonaro denied wrongdoing on his social media channels and said investigators "are trying to repeat the mechanism that worked against Jair Bolsonaro," who was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 27 years in prison after a coup attempt.

Federal police on Thursday seized documents from the film's production company and from lawmaker Mário Frias, who sent about 2 million reais, roughly $400,000, to a nonprofit linked to the movie. Both deny wrongdoing.

The case has also exposed a rift inside the court. Justice André Mendonça, a Bolsonaro appointee, opened the investigation in July at the request of federal police, then said nothing about it for weeks, prompting Lula's allies to accuse him of shielding the senator. He unsealed the documents at the request of Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin, who on Friday ordered Mendonça to release all Banco Master materials within 24 hours.

Paulo Henrique Paschoeto Cassimiro, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University, said the Vorcaro links could cost Flávio Bolsonaro ground he spent months recovering after the May revelations, and could lift Lula, who has demanded full disclosure "no matter who they hit." Lula has already folded the scandal into his campaign. "Banco Master was created in the Bolsonaro administration," he told broadcaster SBT on Thursday. "Vorcaro was arrested in mine, the bank was shuttered in mine."