Ten years have passed since the launch of the corruption investigation that changed Brazil’s political landscape, leading to Bolsonaro’s election. From the scandal, a new leadership class with a plan to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law did not emerge. The rollback on convictions and corruption controls has already begun.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Exactly ten years ago, Brazil experienced its Mani Pulite operation. Prosecutors in the city of Curitiba turned a money laundering investigation into a historic anti-corruption inquiry known as Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato). The investigation quickly expanded, fuelled by testimonies and evidence gathered through police searches and controls, as well as hundreds of plea bargains and leniency agreements. At an apparently unstoppable pace, the inquiry involved a large number of entrepreneurs and politicians, uncovering evidence of corruption involving some of Brazil’s largest companies and many of the country’s most powerful politicians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brazil Overwhelmed by Lava Jato<\/b><\/h3>\n

The revelations had dramatic political consequences. They led to massive street protests, generated political gridlock, helped turn an economic recession into a full-blown depression, created the context for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, and led to the conviction and arrest of her predecessor Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, undoubtedly the most famous of all the Lava Jato defendants. The scandals involved politicians across the political spectrum, but the party under the spotlight the longest was Lula and Rousseff’s centre-left Workers’ Party, which held the presidency from 2003 to 2016. The other two main parties of the time were also severely affected: the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement, which held most of the key offices in Congress since the mid-1980s, and the centre-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party, which held the presidency from 1995 to 2002 and finished second in presidential elections from 2002 to 2014. Despite their initial public support for the anti-corruption investigation, the involvement of many of their leaders in the corruption schemes revealed by Lava Jato prevented the Democratic Movement and the Social Democracy Party from capitalising on the Workers’ Party’s downfall, so much so that both saw their representation in Congress significantly diminish.<\/span><\/p>\n

More generally, the investigations involved almost all the major parties in Brazil’s fragmented political system, where presidents without a majority often have to seek support from other parties in Congress to govern. In the end, while the investigations fuelled anti-establishment sentiments that the Workers’ Party’s rivals could not exploit due to a lack of credibility, Jair Bolsonaro arrived at the presidency in 2018, bringing Brazilian democracy to the brink of collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Between Excesses and Reversals<\/b><\/h3>\n

But beyond the media and political effects, assessing the legacy of the investigations is hindered by the difficulty of measuring whether they have impacted the prevalence of corruption, a point raised by Lucio Picci in his recent book <\/span>Rethinking Corruption<\/span><\/i>. Initially, several companies and individuals involved agreed to pay billions of euros in fines for public funds embezzled from state-owned enterprises and public coffers, but now most of the penalties and convictions have been annulled or are at risk of being annulled.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the annulled convictions is the leniency agreement signed between the construction giant Odebrecht and the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office at the end of 2016, an agreement that crossed Brazil’s borders to reach ten other countries throughout Latin America. In Brazil, it involved 98 politicians, including eight ministers from Michel Temer’s government who had replaced Dilma Rousseff as president, as well as 39 federal deputies and 24 senators from 15 different political parties. In hindsight, the “end of the world” agreement, as Brazilian politicians called it, signed by Odebrecht seems not to have lived up to its promises.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what do these reversals reveal about the capacity of Brazilian institutions to control corruption?<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as happened with Mani Pulite in Italy, the investigations revealed an intricate system in which political and economic elites colluded and protected each other in an increasingly competitive environment. Operating with a cartel logic, the distribution of proceeds among the participating companies satisfied everyone’s needs, favouring those who could wield veto power. Corruption facilitated power-sharing agreements that transcended major political divisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Corrupt transactions not only enriched entrepreneurs and enabled politicians to advance their careers but also touched official (registered) campaign contributions. This led the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court to ban corporate contributions to election campaigns. In response, Congress, after a cautious approach in the early years, significantly increased public funding for political campaigns, which for this year’s municipal elections will reach nearly one billion euros.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reaction to Lava Jato also stems from some excesses by prosecutors and judges who handled the cases. Sergio Moro, the judge who played a significant role in many convictions, including Lula’s, did not improve his image by eagerly accepting Bolsonaro’s invitation to become Minister of Justice. With twists worthy of a Netflix screenplay, revelations then emerged of coordinated moves between judges and prosecutors and the not-so-transparent management of resources recovered by the Brazilian state.<\/span><\/p>\n

During Lava Jato’s heyday, the Brazilian Congress also gained more autonomy from the executive branch with greater control over the federal budget. Under Bolsonaro, this led to the creation of a “secret budget” that allowed individual Congress members, under the leaders’ guidance, to present budget amendments that were opaque and poorly accountable, destined for particular beneficiaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ongoing Restoration<\/b><\/h3>\n

The leadership of Congress and a coalition of parties\u2014from the Workers’ Party to Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party to the far-right\u2014have orchestrated a rollback of some of the most significant parts of the anti-corruption framework that consolidated between 2000 and 2010 and made Lava Jato possible. In 2019, a law on abuse of authority introduced sanctions for prosecutors and judges. Two years later, an almost unanimous vote significantly reduced the scope of the law used by Lava Jato to reimburse public coffers, the same one that gave prosecutors across the country the tools to fight corruption. Currently, Congress is discussing revising plea bargain laws used not only by Lava Jato but also in investigations into Bolsonaro’s involvement in numerous irregularities during his term.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not only Congress that adapted to new circumstances. The once-strong anti-corruption stance of higher courts\u2014particularly the Supreme Federal Court\u2014has also changed, with many judges overturning previous decisions. There was also a strategic compromise with Congress, which helped the higher courts defend themselves against attacks from the Bolsonaro government.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is often thought that investigations and convictions, with the ruin of colleagues’ fortunes and reputations, deter elected officials from falling into the temptation of corruption. But the failures of Lava Jato and the revision of penalties and convictions show how difficult it is to punish corruption when a large part of the political and economic elite directly or indirectly benefits from it. It is Lava Jato’s own grand ambitions that have inadvertently led to today’s backlash.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of Lava Jato, Bolsonaro proudly claimed that his government was free from corruption, but malfeasance continued to thrive. After a decade, it seems clear that the Brazilian version of Mani Pulite did not promote a reformist elite with a clear plan to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law. Indeed, corruption control today is significantly weaker than it was before the investigations began. That said, as happened in Italy with the thirty-year reassessment of Mani Pulite’s consequences, Lava Jato’s legacy is also destined for a critical revision with the aggravating factor of having contributed to the election of a president who deliberately attempted to subvert the democratic process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bio<\/b><\/p>\n

Manoel Gehrke currently works at the Centre on Elections, Democracy, Accountability, and Representation (CEDAR) at the University of Birmingham. He has worked at the CLEAN unit of Bocconi University.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luciano Da Ros is an associate professor of political science at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He is the author of <\/span>Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption and Reform Under Democracy<\/span><\/i> co-authored with Matthew M. Taylor.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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