Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The beginner’s guide to Brazil corruption

The BBC has Brazil corruption scandals: All you need to know. It’s clearly not all you need to know, since not only are entire books being written on the subject, the Beeb forgot to mention that the Federal Police shut down the Lava Jato task force, for instance, and Odebrecht is almost a second thought.

But the article is OK as a beginner’s guide to Brazil corruption, the way comic books used to be an introduction to classic novels like, say, War and Peace.

I’ve been posting on Odebrecht and Lava Jato for years, but the extent of the corruption is such that by now it is safe to say that Brazil’s corruption is second to none.

If you can read Portuguese and have hours to spare, browse through O Globo’s Lava Jato section. It is an object lesson on the corruption big government brings about.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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BAD NEWS: Brazil shuts down Lava Jato task force UPDATED

Bad-bad news:
Brazil Shuts Down Successful Corruption-Fighting Task Force

Brazil’s Federal Police announced this week that it would shut down a crusading anticorruption task force, drawing a rebuke from prosecutors who warned the move could throttle investigations that have exposed systemic corruption among the country’s political and business elites.

The decision comes as President Michel Temer, who is among the politicians facing criminal charges stemming from the unit’s work, is scrambling to shore up support among lawmakers to avoid trial over bribery allegations.

Never mind that; the excuse is “to increase efficiency,”

The Federal Police, which announced the shift on Thursday, characterized it as a bureaucratic reshuffling of personnel and resources that would increase efficiency. In a statement, it said that members of the team known as the Lava Jato, or Car Wash, task force would be absorbed into the organization’s main anticorruption division to more effectively “fight against corruption and money laundering and facilitate the exchange of information.”

Task force members, Brazil’s national association of prosecutors and the federation of Federal Police call it “a clear setback,” which is quite the understatement when you consider that Lava Jato investigators have recovered more than US$3 billion so far, and they were not done.

This will have very negative effects on the economy. Prof. Steve Hanke tweeted,

In more bad news, Venezuelan drug lords are using the port of Santos, Brazil, to ship meth and cocaine to Europe via Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Ivory Coast in Africa.

UPDATE
Lula got a 10-year prison sentence. Will he do time in jail?

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Brazil runs out of money to issue passports

Last year the Rio Olympics were 51% over budget, to the tune of $1.6 billion, the month before they opened. The 2014 World Cup $3 billion stadiums were becoming white elephants a year later.

Now Brazilian authorities have suspended the issuing of new passports because of a budget crisis:

The government said emergency funds for passports would be debated this week.

In a statement late on Tuesday, the federal police said the decision to stop issuing new passports “stems from a dearth of funds earmarked to the activities of migratory control and the issuance of travel documents”.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing, of course, and a long history corruption, and trying to look like a country with strong infrastructure, and whatever, but it all comes down to one thing: overspending.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Ecuador: Odebrecht stoolie turns in tapes of meetings with officials

José Santos, Odebrecht’s top officer in Ecuador, has turned in to investigators videos of his meetings with government officials, according to Veja.

In exchange, he received the shortest sentence of all seventy-seven of the company’s informants.

Seventy-seven singing: Big enough for a symphonic chorus.

Santos’s tapes must be music to the ears of the investigators of the bribes-for-government contracts case(s) against Odebrecht.

Karina Martín reports,

So far, investigations into the Odebrecht case in Ecuador have led to the imprisonment of eight people, among them an uncle of re-elected Vice President Jorge Glas and the former Minister of Electricity Alecksey Mosquera.

General Comptroller Carlos Polit, who is currently outside the country, has been involved, but due to his position, he reportedly enjoys judicial privilege.

Ecuador’s lead prosecutor Carlos Baca alleges that “60 percent of the corruption plot arrived and went through Panamanian ports.”

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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Brazil: Temer acquitted

Brazil’s top electoral court on Friday acquitted President Michel Temer of charges of illegal campaign financing.

the court’s judges voted 4-3 to clear Mr. Temer and former President Dilma Rousseff of charges they used proceeds from the country’s vast Car Wash corruption scandal to fund their 2014 election campaign.

Interestingly,

The majority of the court’s judges said this week that their understanding of electoral law meant that they should only consider evidence available around the time when the case was first filed more than two years ago, before much of the Car Wash evidence was collected.

The trial lasted four days and was televised for a total of 25 hours.

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Brazil: The heaters in the heaters

From Miami to Rio, via air,

Brazil seizes 60 assault rifles hidden in pool heaters

Police in Brazil have seized 60 assault rifles that had been smuggled from the US city of Miami in a shipment of swimming pool heaters.

The weapons, which included 45 AK-47 guns, were found at the cargo terminal at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao International Airport.

Four people have been arrested, police said.
. . .
It is believed the guns could have been sold in Brazil for up to $1.5m (£1.1m) in total. Detectives are investigating an exporter in Miami, Globo newspaper reported without identifying them.

In other headlines:
J&F Investimentos, the holding company behind meatpacking giant JBS SA, agreed to pay roughly $3.2 billion in fines

The penalty outpaces the one levied against construction conglomerate Odebrecht last year as part of the same investigation.

The Associated Press reports J&F plans to pay the fine over a span of 25 years.

Yet this penalty is just one part of the plea deal; another component played out in a very public way earlier this month, when J&F co-owner Joesley Batista turned over a secret recording to prosecutors. That recording — which appears to show Temer condoning the payment of hush money to an imprisoned politician — leaked to media earlier this month, prompting protests in the streets and questions of whether Temer’s tenure could survive the scandal.

Temer insists he will remain in office.

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Brazil: Temer asks for his investigation to continue

After asking that it be suspended, Brazil’s President Michel Temer has asked the Supreme Court to proceed with an investigation against him for obstruction of justice and corruption.

His lawyers say that a secret recording that appears to incriminate him has been edited 70 times.
. . .
President Temer was secretly recorded by Joesley Batista, president of Brazilian giant meat-packing firm JBS, during a late-night, unscheduled meeting.
The wealthy businessman made the recording as part of a plea bargain with the prosecutor’s office.
On the tape, Mr Temer seems to signal his approval for illegal payments to the former speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, who was jailed for corruption last year.
. . .
Many expected the president to resign once the contents of the tape were made public.

The WSJ lists Five Ways Brazil’s President Could Be Forced Out

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