Supreme Court Justice defends political reform in Brazil at event in Washington DC

Henrique Gomez Batista – Globo, 07/06/2016

Justice Dias Toffoli, from Brazil’s Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal), stated this Wednesday morning, during a presentation at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute that he believes that the “Car Wash Operation” investigation is doing a good job. When questioned on his opinion of Judge Sergio Moro, responsible for the “Car Wash” investigation in Curitiba, Toffoli repeated his opinion and stated that whileMoro has done a “good job” he is not responsible for the “judicial transformation in Brazil”.

He stated  “It is not the one judge changing the history of Brazil, but rather civil society in general”

Justice Toffoli reminded the audience that the  “Car Wash Operation” has come this far due to prior modifications of the constitution, which were approved by many politicians who are being investigated, such as the law that allows the use of plea bargains. Toffoli also emphasized that these changes started under Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government.  It was during Cardoso’s government that the law of Fiscal Responsibility was instituted which gives the Public Ministry the transparency and liberty to elect the new Attorney General of the Republic.

“Obviously, there is also the Mensalão case, which saw big name politicians and business executives become indicted, giving further legitimacy to the rule of law,” he said.

Toffoli also defended the habeas corpus that some Justices granted during the Car Wash investigation by saying that it is a normal part of the legal process. Toffoli also defended a legal reform to end the “coalition presidentialism”, by emphasizing that the best thing for the country would be to adopt the district vote in the Chamber of Deputies, as opposed to the current proportional system implemented in the country.

Original Article (Portuguese) can be found here…

Translated into English By Julia Fonteles and Therese Kuester

Brazil Congressional Committee Vote Deals Blow to Ex-Speaker

The Associated Press – ABC News, 06/14/2016

One of Brazil’s most powerful men was dealt a major blow on Tuesday, when a legislative ethics committee voted in favor of a motion to strip the former speaker of Congress’ lower house of his mandate over allegations he lied when he denied possessing foreign bank accounts.

Eduardo Cunha has been regarded as one of Brazil’s most skilled political operators, and even though he’s been beset by corruption allegations and was removed from the post of speaker, he still wields considerable influence in Congress. It came as little surprise, then, that Tuesday’s long-awaited vote by the Chamber of Deputies’ ethics committee was a nail-biter. Many observers predicted that Cunha’s supporters would succeed in defeating the measure.

The 11-9 result hinged on one single vote, that of Rep. Tia Eron from the northeastern Bahia state. The vote was postponed last week after Eron failed to show up to the committee.

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This Woman Holds the Key to the Fate of Brazil

Mac Margolis – Bloomberg, 06/13/2016

Until a couple of weeks ago, not many Brazilians had heard of Eronildes Vasconcelos. Fellow parishioners in Salvador, her home town in northeast Brazil, know the churchgoing 44-year-old widowand mother of two as a junior member of the country’s growing evangelical Christian congressional caucus.

But thanks to the unlikely role she’s been called on to play in shaping the outcome of Brazil’s widening political corruption scandal, Vasconcelos has become a national celebrity of sorts. Her every hosanna now galvanizes public attention from Twitter to the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia.

Vasconcelos — or Aunt Eron, as she prefers — is no power broker. She just happens to sit on the congressional ethics committee, where she’s wound up with the decisive vote on the fate of one of the country’s most notorious political operators, speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha.

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A Final Defense of Dilma Rousseff

Brian Winter – Americas Quarterly, 05/11/2016

Back in March 2014, when the Petrobras scandal was just getting started, some of President Dilma Rousseff’s top aides saw a golden opportunity to kill the investigation – or at least badly wound it.

Márcio Anselmo, the Federal Police deputy in charge of the probe, had given an interview (which can be seen here) to Jornal Nacional, Brazil’s most-watched news program. On-camera and on-the-record, Anselmo and others laid out the main points of the case, which would soon become notorious: A former Petrobras board member who had accepted a Land Rover as a bribe, the money launderer whose plea-bargain testimony would prove key, and the sordid connections with some of the country’s biggest construction companies.

Everyone in Brasília knew the stakes were huge. The election was just six months away, and Rousseff was facing a tight race. But some ministers were convinced the TV interview was actually a blessing in disguise. They believed Anselmo had broken a dictatorship-era statute that, they argued, prohibited Federal Police officials from discussing cases in progress with the media. Fire him, they urged Rousseff. Fire him now and attack the investigators for using the media to selectively leak information damaging to the government.

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Brazil’s crusading corruption investigation is winding down

Sabrina Valle and Jessica Brice – Bloomberg, 05/04/2016

The crusading federal judge behind Brazil’s explosive corruption investigation, facing the limits of his mandate and signs of political pushback, sees his role in the case winding down by the end of the year, a turning point in a probe that has helped push the president to the brink of impeachment.

For more than two years, Judge Sergio Moro and his team of prosecutors and police in the southern town of Curitiba have tracked the $1.8-billion graft scandal across four continents. They uncovered a crime ring so epic that it shattered Brazil’s political and economic leadership and helped tip the nation into its worst recession in a century.

Now, legal challenges are chipping away at Moro’s jurisdiction over executives amid criticism that he’s over-reaching. Brazilian law also bars him from going after sitting politicians accused of graft. So he expects significantly fewer new operations under his watch starting next year, according to three top officials who asked not to be named relaying details from private conversations. The press-shy judge declined to comment.

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Petrobras boomtown turns desolate as refinery’s billions vanish

Sabrina Valle and Carlos Caminada – Yahoo Business, 05/04/2016

Located just 30 miles east of Rio de Janeiro’s bustling Copacabana beach, Itaborai looks like many oil boomtowns after the bust — except the deserted stores and empty glass towers that loom over this town of 220,000 speak of some bigger cataclysm than the collapse of crude prices.

“They said this would be the new oil city,” says Jefferson Costa, one of scores of migrants from Brazil’s impoverished north lured here by a multibillion-dollar petrochemical project that was supposed to create more than 100,000 jobs. Work on the complex, known as Comperj, has stopped, and unless new investors materialize, the single refinery now standing may never produce a single drop of fuel. “It’s empty inside,” says Costa, a plumber who lost his job six months ago when construction came to a halt. “People say it will become a large warehouse.”

Comperj has become a symbol of pervasive corruption at Brazil’s state-run oil producer, Petrobras. A sprawling investigation by federal police and prosecutors dubbed Operation Carwash has revealed massive graft, implicating construction conglomerates, banks, oil service providers, shipbuilders and politicians. About 2 percentage points of the 3.8 percent contraction in Brazil’s gross domestic product last year can be attributed to the effects of the scandal on the company and its suppliers, according to estimates from Tendencias, a consulting firm based in Sao Paulo.

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Brazil prosecutor vows to keep Petrobras corruption probe on course

Luciana Magalhaes and Reed Johnson – The Wall Street Journal, 04/26/2016

CURITIBA, Brazil—A member of the prosecutorial team spearheading Brazil’s landmark corruption investigation says he and his colleagues will press forward with the vast criminal probe, despite fears that a new government coalition might try to shut it down.

The future of Operation Car Wash, which uncovered a yearslong embezzlement ring centered on state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, is among the questions raised by the prospect of President Dilma Rousseff being removed from office.

Ms. Rousseff, who was chairwoman of Petrobras during much of the alleged wrongdoing, hasn’t been implicated by prosecutors in the scandal. She faces impeachment on separate charges of violating federal budget laws, allegations that she denies.

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The campaign to impeach Brazil’s President is viciously sexist

Marc Hertzman – The New York Magazine, 04/22/2016

On Sunday, Brazil’s lower house (the Chamber of Deputies) voted to proceed with impeachment hearings against Dilma Rousseff, the nation’s first female president, by an overwhelming 2:1 majority. The case now moves to the Senate, which is expected to vote on Rousseff’s ouster by May 17. Much like in the U.S., both houses are overwhelmingly male. And just like in the U.S., the treatment of the country’s most prominent female politician is largely a function of sexism.

The stated reason for Rousseff’s impeachment is her alleged misappropriation of funds in an effort to cover budget gaps and boost confidence in the economy (and her administration). The accusations come from a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), that has uncovered a dizzying array of malfeasance at nearly every level of government.

So the proceedings against Rousseff might not seem so remarkable, if not for the mind-blowing contradictions involved. Brazil’s previous two presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Rousseff’s mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, both faced numerous similar — in some cases, more serious — charges (17 counts against Cardoso, 34 for Silva), none of which prompted impeachment hearings.

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Brazil’s Lula ‘to be President Dilma’s chief of staff’

BBC News – 03/16/16

Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will become the new chief of staff for President Dilma Rousseff, a senior lawmaker says.

The move shields Lula from possible prosecution by a federal judge investigating a massive corruption scandal named Operation Car Wash.

Under Brazilian law, cabinet members can only be tried by the Supreme Court.

Lula was questioned two weeks ago over allegations of money laundering connected to Operation Car Wash.

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An oil scandal is shaking Brazil’s democracy to its core

Dom Phillips – The Washington Post, 7/23/2015

There are times in Brazil’s young democracy — its constitution dates from 1988 — when the country seems to be making things up as it goes along.

This is one of them.

What began in 2014 as a police investigation called “Operation Car Wash” has spiraled into a horrendously dense drama, in which some of Brazil’s top politicians and largest companies have been forced into leading roles under harsh lights.

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