Lava Jato still inspires the fight against corruption in Brazil

A decade after the outbreak, on March 17, 2014, Lava Jato, the mega-operation responsible for unveiling the biggest corruption scheme in the country’s history, is the victim of a series of setbacks imposed by the courts and the political scene. Its triumphs on several fronts have also suffered setbacks, especially with regard to leniency agreements with denounced companies, plea bargains and repatriation, totaling the significant amount of R$26 billion.

But, despite the defeats imposed by decisions supported by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) and the relentless persecution of its protagonists – with emphasis on the former judge and current senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR) and the former head of the force – task, former prosecutor and former deputy Deltan Dallagnol (Novo-PR) –, Lava Jato survives in the popular imagination as an exceptional and inspiring case of successful confrontation with the broad and historical promiscuous relationship between the public and private sector in Brazil, provoking a brief interval in it.

In recent decisions, the STF suspended fines under leniency agreements, annulled convictions and closed investigations. In recent months, for example, Minister Dias Toffoli suspended the payment of Odebrecht fines. For 74% of Brazilians, the Court “encourages corruption” by relaxing punishments for construction companies, as revealed by a recent survey by the Quaest Institute*.

For the experts consulted by People’s Gazette, the operation was born as a monumental judicial undertaking and evolved into a political banner. With these legacies weakened, it persists today as hope for a resumption of the national fight against corruption in a future with no visible horizon yet.

Rodrigo Chemim, prosecutor at the Public Ministry (MP) of Paraná, highlights that few of Lava Jato’s assets remain, such as expertise in operations and valuing compliance. “In any case, the main achievement was a clear confirmation of what has long been known: deeply rooted corruption in power,” he added.

Another positive point he highlighted was having induced companies to accelerate integrity processes, which effectively contributed to the culture of self-control. “Such advances were, however, obscured by the dismantling of the operation,” he lamented. Anti-corruption legislation and jurisprudence suffered serious losses, including the emptying of control agencies.

Chemim sees Lava Jato’s most desolate moment as the persecution of the main names in the operation. “The revocation, last year, of Deltan Dallagnol’s mandate, in a legally unsustainable decision, with a forced extension of a sanction rule, is something that is not seen in a democracy,” he said. He adds that the possibility of Sergio Moro’s impeachment “only increases the feeling of hopelessness”. The allegation that there was coercion on the part of those investigated, contradicted by the transparency and approvals of the operation, is another situation that undermines trust in public agents.

The prosecutor recalls that Brazil has historically been lenient with elite crimes, but there was a brief change between 2016 and 2018, then returning to previous standards, which reinforces the cruel disadvantage for the needy population, who are more dependent on the State. “Despite its great wealth, the country continues to face challenges in the fair distribution of resources, perpetuating social injustice,” he said. For this reason, he fears a bleak future for anti-corruption policies in the short and medium term. “At the moment, the message to investigators is clear: certain powerful people are untouchable, and investigating them could result in retaliation, preventing the building of a nation less influenced by corrupt practices”, he lamented.

Returning to the fight against corruption requires good will from politicians

Lava Jato, in the view of Constitutional Law professor Vera Chemin, also appears as a symbol in the fight against corruption within the Brazilian legal-political context. Despite the meticulous dismantling of the operation, through political strategies and crucial decisions by the STF, which resulted in the annulment of all acts carried out by prosecutors and magistrates in various regions of the country, mainly in the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, where it began , “the operation remains in history as an effective response to crimes committed by public and political agents”.

She emphasizes that, although possible excesses can be pointed out, “those responsible for the operation were able to unequivocally prove the practice of illicit acts against the Public Administration, both internally and externally, evidenced by confessions and significant returns of amounts diverted from public coffers that harmed the population ”. “Lava Jato represents the dividing line between an unpunished Brazil and a brief period of transparency, even if it has returned to the old status quo. It showed that it is possible and viable to combat structural corruption in the Brazilian State, as long as there is cooperation and political will,” she said.

From the perspective of Ricardo Peake Braga, a lawyer specializing in freedom of expression, despite possible excesses in isolated cases, Operation Lava Jato represented a crucial moment in Brazilian history. “For the first time, there was a belief that powerful businesspeople and politicians were not immune to the law. Unfortunately, this change was ephemeral, as the patrimonial-oligarchic system that dominates the country managed to react and regain control”, he pondered.

Operation had unprecedented scope of economic and political power

Lava Jato began with an investigation by the Federal Police (PF) that mobilized 400 agents in seven units of the federation to dismantle a scheme of embezzlement and money laundering, estimated at R$10 billion at the time. In collaboration with the Federal Court and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, it initially targeted money changers Alberto Youssef, already under scrutiny since 2008 for irregularities reported in Banestado’s CPI, and Carlos Habib Chater, owner of Posto da Torre, in Brasília, used as “ ATM” and which inspired the name of the operation. In the following years, his revelations would gain unexpected dimensions and serious implications for national life.

To date, Moro and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) appear as the main names in the operation. Lava Jato reached its peak with the arrest of the PT member in 2018, but began to decline at the end of the same year, after the former judge’s decision to leave the judiciary and take on the position of Minister of Justice under then-president Jair Bolsonaro (at the time in the PSL, today in the PL), elected under the banner of combating systemic corruption. In this vein, Lula returns to the electoral arena and, in 2021, minister Edson Fachin, Lava Jato rapporteur at the STF, decided to annul all of the PT member’s convictions arising from the operation in Curitiba.

The many convictions of parliamentarians, contractors, party leaders and even members of the Court sparked a brutal reaction from the affected groups.

In Curitiba alone, 81 phases were launched until 2021, the year in which the operation task force was closed. 132 preventive arrest warrants were issued in this court. Lula was a defendant in four cases and spent 580 days in prison in Curitiba after the sentence in the triple case. According to the MPF survey, 43 leniency agreements were signed with companies involved in corruption schemes. Petrobras emerges as one of the main beneficiaries of the return of resources, totaling more than R$6 billion from agreements signed by Lava Jato. In 2022 alone, the state-owned company saw the recovery of R$1.2 billion.

With Petrobras as the epicenter, the operation operated on four fronts: Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília. In seven years of effective operation, from 2014 to 2021, Lava Jato had unprecedented scope in the country’s judicial history, reaching the top of the Legislature, parliamentarians, former governors and former presidents. In total, 553 people were reported in Curitiba and 887 in Rio. In Brasília, there were 126 and in São Paulo, 89. Unlike Operation Mãos Limpas, in Italy, in 1992, which served as a model, Lava Jato had an international spread , leading to the arrest of former presidents of Peru.

STF maneuvers gave the final blow to Lava Jato

In March 2019, the STF decided that Lava Jato cases related to campaign fund 2 should be processed in the Electoral Court, not in the Federal Court. The measure resulted in the annulment of a series of sentences that had already been issued. In June of that year, the website The Intercept Brazil publishes dialogues between prosecutors and Moro on the Telegram app. The conversations showed proximity between judge and prosecution and led to the reversal of old decisions in the Judiciary.

The review of leniency agreements gained momentum after the parties affected by Lava Jato managed to gain access to the files of Operation Spoofing, from 2019, related to the hacked content of conversations on Telegram between members of the Lava Jato task force, and suggested alleged collusion between prosecutors and Moro.

The plea bargain agreements, approved by the STF during Lava Jato, resulted in the recovery of R$2 billion to the public coffers. The amount was reached through the payment of fines or restitution of assets, according to the office of Minister Edson Fachin, rapporteur of the operation at the Court. In total, the Supreme Court approved 120 plea agreements, with the original rapporteur, Teori Zavascki, authorizing 21 before dying in a helicopter accident in 2017. On that occasion, the then president of the STF, Cármen Lúcia, approved the 77 member agreements from Odebrecht. Subsequently, Fachin took over as rapporteur and validated 22 more agreements.

As for leniency agreements, minister André Mendonça recently authorized the renegotiation of those already forwarded. Minister Dias Toffoli, in turn, suspended the payment of fines from J&F (R$10.3 billion) and Odebrecht (R$3.8 billion).

The STF analyzed 27 complaints presented by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) within the scope of Lava Jato. Of these, nine were accepted and 18 rejected. Of the nine open criminal cases, eight were tried, resulting in four acquittals and three convictions. One case remains tied, while another action was forwarded to another instance. Six investigations are still ongoing, under Fachin’s report.

*Methodology

The Genial/Quaest survey interviewed 2,000 Brazilians aged 16 and over in 120 municipalities in person. The margin of error is estimated at plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, for a 95% confidence level.