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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Brazil: Lula trial reveals ties with Chavez

As you may recall, Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on trial.

All sorts of things are coming out. For instance, Lula personally recruited

Mônica Moura and her husband João Santana, a couple whose marketing strategies helped keep Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party in power for 13 years

for help in Venezuelan Hugo Chávez’s 2012 campaign. Current dictator Nicolás Maduro (emphasis added)

Mr. Maduro, then Venezuela’s foreign minister, personally handed Ms. Moura $11 million in cash in his Caracas office, she said in the testimony given in court to Brazilian prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence on corruption charges. Brazil’s two largest construction companies, Odebrecht SA and Andrade Gutierrez, which are under investigation in Brazil for allegedly paying bribes to Mr. da Silva, wired her an additional $9 million to an offshore account, Ms. Moura said.

As the article correctly points out,

Under Mr. Chávez, Odebrecht became the biggest contractor in Venezuela, receiving roughly $11 billion over 14 years for projects ranging from irrigation channels to airports.
. . .
Odebrecht admitted to paying $98 million in bribes in Venezuela.

Now

The heads of Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, as well as Mr. Santana and Ms. Moura, are all in jail or confined to their homes after being convicted on corruption charges related to Car Wash.

And they’re willing to talk.

Will this have any effect on Venezuela’s deteriorating condition? I doubt it; but it will have repercussions in Brazil.

Stay tuned.

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Venezuela: Where democracy really dies in darkness

You may recall this,

Benjamin Weingarten writes about Where Democracy Really Does Die in Darkness. Obsessed with Trump, Western media ignore the march of authoritarianism around the world. Weingarten writes on Turkey and Hong Kong, and has this to say about Venezuela,

Another story that the media largely ignore is that of the collapse of Venezuela under socialism. The Left’s “May Day”—better titled Victims of Communism Day— came and went with barely a peep about the collapse of the once-vibrant Latin American nation under Hugo Chavez/Nicolás Maduro Stalinism. Just as Turkey is about to fall under the veil of Islamist tyranny, Venezuela is reaching the logical conclusion of Leftist tyranny. Thousands have been taking to the streets in protest. Citizens are going hungry in a country that was once the richest in the region. The government is seizing the assets of global corporations. Inflation is running at 280 percent. In a nation that had banned private gun ownership, Maduro is now planning to arm up to 400,000 loyalists to preserve some semblance of order. Central planning and other attacks on individual liberty and private property rights have turned Venezuela into another failed Communist experiment, leaving its people mired in violence, poverty, and misery.

You might think that the downfall of a nation in America’s hemisphere under democratically elected socialists might be subject to intense media coverage. You would be wrong. Could it be that the Left does not wish to report on the end results of its policies?

The Health Minister got the boot after

Ministry data published this week showed cases of infant mortality rose 30 per cent, maternal mortality 65 per cent and malaria shot up 76 per cent last year. There was also a jump in illnesses such as diphtheria and Zika.

But it’s free healthcare!

Russia, Russia: Russian Oil Deals Provide A Lifeline For Venezuela’s Embattled Maduro.
Russia plans to start supplying wheat to Venezuela this year.

Nicolás’s millions

In a document revealed by Brazil’s Federal Supreme Tribunal, the wife of Brazilian publicist Joao Santana, Mónica Moura, confessed that she received $11 million at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry headquarters, directly from Nicolás’ hands when he was the Foreign Minister. The Santana-Moura partnership was the brains behind el finado’s last re-election campaign back in 2012: “Chávez, corazón del pueblo.”

As part of her plea bargain with Brazilian justice, Moura confessed under oath that Nicolás handed her $11 million in cash and still owed her $15 more million. Nicolás demanded Moura receive all payments for the campaign without declaring them, with some of the payments fronted Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez.

The protests continue,

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Brazil: Lula “ready to run” again next year

Part of the fun of following Latin American news is that they are stranger than fiction. For instance, I first came across this headline at Panam post: Former Brazilian President Lula “Prepared” To Run Again in 2018.

They, in turn, got it from El Nuevo Herald: Lula dice estar “preparado” a ser candidato presidencial en 2018.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

So I checked Brazilian media, and, sure enough, Lula da Silva pronto para voltar a disputar a Presidência. Antigo presidente brasileiro diz que os seus “adversários estão muito nervosos”. [Lula da Silva ready to run for President. Former president says his “adversaries are very nervous.”]. In an interview with Radio Meio Norte, Lula declared,

“Quero dizer que, se necessário, se o Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) precisar eu estou disposto a voltar a disputar para ser Presidente”
[my translation:] “I want to say, that, if necessary, if the “Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, or PT) needs me, I am ready to run for President”

In another interview (link in Portuguese), Lula looked back nostalgically to his years as president and sighed, “I think the country needs to find its way, to be happy again, to live democratically.”

Lula was indicted five times on corruption-related charges just last year alone. That doesn’t count the evidence presented in court this week, any new charges, or the indictments against his children, his wife, or his associates. As Sabrina Martín correctly points out,

Lula is under investigation in connection with the Lava Jato operation. One investigation is allegedly claims that payments were made for a former Petrobras director’s silence; another is for Operation Zelotes, a framework that favored companies that did not pay taxes, as well as an investigation into influence peddling, and finally for money laundering which allegedly included an apartment on the coast Of Sao Paulo as one of the inducements.

Likewise, Lula is accused of participating in the project of rerouting between 2% and 3% of the value of the contracts signed between state-owned Petrobras and the construction company Odebrecht.

Let’s hope the Brazilian people stay the course fighting corruption and don’t get Lula back on the campaign trail.

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Brazil: Marcelo Odebrecht paid Lula US$5 million in bribes


Former Odebrecht Organization CEO Marcelo Odebrecht (whose grandfather Norberto founded the company in 1944) presented Judge Sergio Moro documents showing payments totaling nearly US$5 million to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reports Infobae (link in Spanish).

The payments were made in 2012-2013 through Dilma Rousseff’s right-hand man, Antonio Palocci, who is under trial.

Marcelo Odebrecht, who has been in jail since 2015, reportedly provided the documents in hope of a reduced sentence, according to Infobae.

The WSJ reports Brazil Supreme Court Authorizes Investigation of Top Government Officials in the Lava Jato investigation,

Justice Edson Fachin, who is overseeing cases in Brazil’s high court related to the country’s sprawling Operation Car Wash probe, has given permission for prosecutors to open investigations into at least eight ministers, the leaders of both houses of Congress, and more than 50 senators and federal deputies, according to a document from the court released Tuesday.

The Car Wash investigation, which centers on bid-rigging at the state-controlled oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, has led to more than 100 convictions over the past three years and implicated some of the country’s most influential businessmen and politicians of all major parties.

If you are keeping count, in 2016 Lula was indicted five times on corruption-related charges.

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Colombia: Magdalena River dredging project suspended over Odebrecht

The project to make the Magdalena River in Colombia more navigable has been suspended:
Odebrecht Bribery Plea Muddies Colombia’s Big River Project. Channelization of Magdalena River stalled over corruption fears, thwarting country’s ambitious infrastructure plans

A string of gritty river towns along Colombia’s mightiest river have waited years for mounds of silt to be dredged from the waterway, a project that was supposed to start last year and bolster growth in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy.

But the $862-million contract to make 565 miles of the Magdalena River more navigable went mostly to Brazilian firm Odebrecht SA, whose explosive admission that it paid extensive bribes to land infrastructure projects led Colombian regulators last month to suspend the river works. That contract, which promised to triple river cargo, was the cornerstone of a now troubled $25-billion infrastructure initiative to build new highways, airports and ports that would modernize a country bedeviled by its rugged terrain.

The Odebrecht corruption investigation has tied up hundreds of infrastructure projects in the hemisphere: Odebrecht Mess Leaves Devastation Trail From Andes to Caribbean, among them

Peru’s grandest infrastructure project. The 1,025-kilometer (637-mile) Gasoducto Sur Peruano was meant to climb from Cuzco’s jungle gas fields to nearly 5,000 meters (16,405 feet) above sea level and then back down. Only 33 kilometers of pipe were in the ground before bribery allegations ended Odebrecht’s access to funds, prompting the government to terminate the contract last month.

Peru is particularly affected,

Nowhere is the scandal more damaging than in Peru where President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is struggling to make good on his promise to boost growth by investing in infrastructure. Cancellation of Odebrecht’s pipeline contract set back a $70-billion infrastructure plan. Other projects have slowed under added scrutiny. Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne was forced to shave a percentage point off his growth forecast for 2017.

The BBC has a brief summary, Brazil’s Odebrecht corruption scandal

UPDATE
Trending at BadBlue.

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Brazil: Odebrecht, Braskem, and BNDES

Mary O’Grady untangles the Brazilian corruption scandal alphabet soup:

Trickle-Down Corruption in BrazilThe rot starts with Petrobras and with the opaque national development bank.

In 2014 Brazilian prosecutors began to probe a money-laundering racket at a car wash in Brasilia. The Petrobras corruption uncovered by “Operation Car Wash” turned out to be like pulling on the loose thread of a king-size blanket. It unraveled the Lula narrative that Petrobras is a carefully guarded national treasure, operated for the benefit of Brazilians. It also led investigators to the web of corruption run by Odebrecht and Braskem, two companies that benefit from BNDES project financing.

What is more, as the Journal’s Samantha Pearson reported last week, the “ ‘Car Wash’ case has encouraged local prosecutors to dig into hundreds of bribery scandals, paralyzing cities around the country.”

During the 1995-2003 presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, economically liberal technocrats made an effort to pry political fingers off Petrobras by offering minority shares to private capital and professionalizing its board and management. Lula, who succeeded President Cardoso, framed that as surrendering the patrimony of the people to evil capitalists. To push back, he and his Workers’ Party packed the executive level of the company with political appointees and gained influence on the board.

One important contractor for Petrobras was Odebrecht. Both the Odebrecht and the Braskem plea agreements, while not naming names, describe individuals instrumental to the bribery schemes. In both cases there is at least one “executive at Petrobras,” and more than one elected official. The Braskem plea cites two “high-level” members of the executive branch and two government ministers. Petrobras says it is cooperating with Brazilian investigators.

The Odebrecht agreement describes a network of shell companies and a special Odebrecht unit called the Division of Special Operations. A U.S. Justice Department press release in December called this a “Department of Bribery.”

Former Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht is serving a 19-year sentence on corruption charges.

And, by the way, BNDES was to finance Odebrecht’s renovation of Cuba’s Port of Mariel, “but Brazilian backing for the Castro military dictatorship is a state secret.”

Read the whole thing.

Prior Odebrecht posts.

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Ecuador: DOJ won’t release names of Ecuador officials implicated in Odebrecht case

Jim Wyss reports that the DOJ won’t release names of Ecuador officials implicated in Odebrecht case, despite Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s repeated requests:

The U.S. Department of Justice will not provide U.S. lawmakers with the names of Ecuadorian officials who might have been implicated in the sweeping Odebrecht corruption case — as long as the investigation is active.

In a statement Thursday, Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the DOJ had denied her Jan. 6 request to make the names public, citing the department’s policy of not discussing “ongoing investigation[s]” or publicly naming “unindicted co-conspirators.”

The request is politically charged, as the South American nation heads into a tight April 2 presidential runoff that will determine the successor of President Rafael Correa and where corruption allegations have taken center stage.

Ecuador’s Attorney General Galo Chiriboga has been tweeting about all the cooperation on the Odebrecht case, including his February 4 meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz under the Obama administration,

when they signed a cooperation agreement,

Chiriboga tweeted that Swartz did not release names,

Rafael Correa doesn’t want to disclose,

In Ecuador, authorities have not provided names about who might be involved. But Correa has said the case was being manipulated by U.S. authorities to try to skew the election, where his hand-picked successor, Lenín Moreno, is running in a tight race against former banker Guillermo Lasso.

UPDATE
Trending at Bad Blue.

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11 countries now coordinating Odebrecht investigation UPDATED

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal and Venezuela:

Brazil, 10 Other Countries Coordinate Odebrecht Probes. Combined task force will also cooperate with investigation centered on Petrobras contracts

The new task force will also cooperate with the so-called Operation Car Wash investigation of bid-rigging and bribery by Odebrecht and other construction companies for contracts with Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras.

The task force will work “on the recovery of assets and full compensation for damages caused by illicit activities, including the payment of fines, according to the legislation of each country,” prosecutors said in a statement. The accord was announced by the press department of Brazil’s attorney general, Rodrigo Janot.

As for Alejandro Toledo, Peru is in the process of filing an actual extradition request.

UPDATE

“Ecuador prosecutor reject Odebrecht information from Parana Public Minist’y because they lack Portuguese translators”

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