FOR YEARS it made the powerful tremble. The revelations by the task-force of prosecutors in Curitiba who led the anti-corruption probe known as Lava Jato (Car Wash) brought millions of Brazilians onto the streets in outrage. Those protests contributed to the impeachment of a president, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016. The prosecutors secured jail sentences for her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Marcelo Odebrecht, Brazil’s ninth-richest man. On February 3rd the task-force was wound up, in near-silence. Its demise marks the symbolic end of an unprecedented push to reduce graft across Latin America. Sadly, there is little reason to think that it has made a lasting difference. The pandemic and the economic slump have displaced, probably temporarily, worries about crooks in suits.
Lava Jato started with a money-launderer who used a money-transfer service at a petrol station in Brasília (thus its name). Prosecutors uncovered a web of bribes for padded contracts issued by Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant, over more than a decade in which Lula’s Workers’ Party was in power (see article). The task-force used new tools, including plea-bargaining and the exchange of financial information with Swiss and other authorities. They found that Odebrecht, a construction firm, had set up a bribes unit that paid $800m in a dozen countries. The malfeasance extended to other big Brazilian firms.
In all, 174 people, including 16 politicians, were found guilty, and 26bn reais ($5bn) was recovered for public coffers. Three former Peruvian presidents were detained over the Odebrecht scandal; a fourth committed suicide. In a region where the powerful enjoyed impunity, this was unprecedented.
Yet in the end the anti-corruption drive was undone by the politicisation of justice, in two ways. Sergio Moro, the crusading judge in Curitiba, turned out not to be impartial. He sentenced Lula to 12 years for receiving a beachside apartment. Except that Lula neither owned nor used it. That sentence was upheld by an appeal court. There were other, more solid cases against Lula. But with him out of the presidential race in 2018, Mr Moro became justice minister in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, its hard-right winner. Leaked messages showed that Mr Moro coached Deltan Dallagnol, the lead prosecutor in Curitiba, in violation of procedure.
As minister, Mr Moro said he hoped to institutionalise the fight against corruption. Mr Bolsonaro had posed as an anti-corruption campaigner. In office, he scotched that agenda after prosecutors began investigating one of his sons and an aide. Mr Bolsonaro’s hand-picked attorney-general weakened the task-force before winding it up. Four prosecutors will continue to work on corruption and Edson Fachin, the Supreme Court justice handling Lava Jato cases, insists it “has only just begun”. That smacks of bravado.
Lava Jato promised to cleanse Brazilian politics. “It could have been as important for Brazil as democratisation in the 1980s and the [inflation-busting] Real Plan of the 1990s,” says Eduardo Giannetti, a Brazilian philosopher. But there was no follow-up. In another sign of a return to the “old politics” that Mr Bolsonaro once denounced, he backed Arthur Lira, a defendant in Lava Jato, as the new speaker of the lower house of Congress.
Outside Brazil, Peru’s prosecutors went furthest. But they have yet to prove any of their cases. In targeting some people for investigation, they appear to have political motives. In Mexico Emilio Lozoya, a former boss of Pemex, the state energy company, is accused of pocketing $10.5m but walks free after incriminating political foes of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In Argentina, there is some hope. On February 24th Lázaro Báez, a close associate of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the vice-president and a former president, was sentenced to 12 years for money-laundering. Attempts by Ms Fernández’s supporters to capture the judiciary have so far failed.
Lava Jato has shown that there are effective ways to take on grand corruption. “Some lessons have been learned,” says Delia Ferreira, an Argentine lawyer who chairs Transparency International, a global watchdog. Some big firms have tightened controls. But this progress has not been consolidated into greater judicial independence. There is no sadder example of the problem’s persistence than allegations in several countries of profiteering from the procurement of health-care supplies during the pandemic. In one of its biggest battles, Latin America is almost back to square one.