Brazilian politics has been on a roller coaster ride in recent years due to the effects (and ups and downs) of the anti-corruption investigation. Lava Jato. The police baptized her that way, car wash, in Portuguese, because she was born in a nondescript gas station with a cleaning workshop in Brasilia, where on March 17, 2014, a money launderer who operated there was arrested. In days, the first shock. A senior Petrobras official went to jail. That was just a preview of a case that this Sunday turns a decade old. It grew to become a convoluted skein, with the state company Petrobras as the epicenter of the plot, which shook Brazilian politics and justice like never before.
It had countless derivatives. The Workers’ Party was expelled from power by Congress in 2016. The fight against corruption became the great national banner and paved the way for the far right to the Presidency in 2018. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was imprisoned and regained freedom 580 days later, led the left back to power in 2022. A week later, Bolsonarism staged a coup attempt in Brasilia.
He Lava Jato case In Brazil there were 174 convictions, more than 200 agreements for those investigated to confess, and the public coffers recovered 4.3 billion reais (860 million dollars, 790 million euros), the majority for Petrobras.
This is a review, in broad strokes, of the main protagonists of the plot: where they were at the height of the case and where they are now. The fate of the most prominent has taken a 180 degree turn. Part of the judicial processes have been annulled. And, since this is the homeland of the soap opera, the hero became the villain and vice versa. Read, the former judge Sérgio Moro and his main prisoner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Sérgio Moro, 51 years old
For years, investigating judge Sérgio Moro embodied Lava Jato and its promise that it would mean the end of corruption and impunity for the powerful. Lula’s nemesis. But the days when he was hailed as a hero by gigantic crowds and canvassed for the Presidency of the Republic are long forgotten.
In 2018 he accepted the invitation of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro to be Minister of Justice (which meant hanging up his robe and forgetting about a juicy pension). The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that it was biased in judging Lula.
His attempt to be the alternative to the presidential candidacies of Lula and Bolsonaro failed miserably. He had to be content with the Senate. When he won the seat, in 2022, his wife got another one as a deputy.
His interrogation of Lula is one of the most remembered moments of the investigation; a full-fledged duel between a veteran former president and a young provincial judge. Lula has declared himself in favor of keeping his seat.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78 years old
The veteran politician who finished his second term in 2009 with a popularity of 86% (the envy of any democrat on the planet) was convicted of corruption in the case. Lava Jato. The founder of the PT was imprisoned for 580 days in a Curitiba police station while proclaiming his innocence. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has always considered himself the victim of a plot against him, and against the Brazilian left, perpetrated by the elites with the complicity of the main media and the US, which according to him had its eye on Petrobras.
Lula was released from prison when Bolsonaro was about to complete his first year in power, in 2019. He was free, along with thousands of other prisoners, when the Supreme Court reversed a previous change in doctrine that led the former president to prison; the court returned to the original understanding—prior to the Lava Jato— that those convicted can exhaust every last resort in freedom.
Already in 2021, the Supreme Court annulled the main conviction against Lula. A clean judicial path was open if he wanted to run in the elections. It didn’t take him long to decide. And he won them, but just barely.
While in prison, Lula read like never before and fell in love. The day she regained her freedom she introduced her girlfriend, Janja, a sociologist and party activist. They married. The first lady is one of the president’s top advisors.
The plot
The investigators discovered a monumental system of bribes, commissions and illegal financing of parties around Petrobras and with great prominence of the PT. It worked like this: Petrobras executives received bribes from large construction companies in exchange for artificially inflated contracts with the company. And that money later went to the parties that appointed the oil company’s directors. The case had multiple ramifications, also in countries like Peru, Colombia, Mexico…
Something never seen before in Brazil and other Latin American countries happened. The white glove with the powerful ended (or seemed to end). Dozens of untouchable politicians and businessmen were tried, convicted and imprisoned. Brazil proclaimed the end of impunity and a good part of the country enthusiastically embarked on a crusade against corruption and against the PT, considered a nest of thieves.
For years, the case marked the political agenda. At a dizzying pace, Congress ousted President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, abruptly and dramatically ending 14 years of progressive governments. Lula was jailed and banned by judges from contesting the elections in 2018, paving the way for Bolsonaro, Brazil’s first far-right president.
Jair Bolsonaro, 68 years old
At the height of Lava Jato, Jair Bolsonaro was a mediocre deputy of the so-called lower clergy. He dedicated his vote in favor of impeachment from Dilma to the soldier Carlos Alberto Brihante Ustra, who tortured the president when she was a young guerrilla (she never shot herself). Bolsonaro saw an opportunity in the anti-corruption banner and the popular desire for renewal. Without shame, none of them presented themselves as anti-system, closed a political alliance with the evangelicals, took advantage of social networks and rode the wave of national populism that was taking shape with Putin, Trump or Modi.
He hit the target. He was elected president, appointed Moro as minister. His mandate was turbulent due to the pandemic—which he managed with denialist policies—and the constant coup threats. He narrowly lost the election. Since he was disqualified, he will have to wait until 2030 to be able to run for office. The evidence about his role in plotting a coup plot is multiplying. The bets are on whether he will end up in jail.
Dilma Rousseff, 76 years old
Lula’s political heir, Dilma Rousseff, was ousted after narrowly winning a second term. By the time Congress threw her out of power and with her the PT, Brazil was mired in a recession because in the final stretch it turned on the tap of public money in a desperate attempt to survive. A sin that the middle class still has not forgiven. Her downfall had a very sexist component, coupled with the many criticisms that she lacked the waist that Brazilian politics requires. She fell into ostracism. In the 2018 elections she did not even win a senatorial seat in Minas Gerais, her home state. She only managed to rehabilitate herself with the return of her godfather to power. Lula considered naming her ambassador, but that would have required submitting to an appearance in the Senate, so she decided to send her to Shanghai (China), to direct the BRICS bank (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
Deltan Dallagnol, 44 years old
Little known outside Brazil, Deltan Dallagnol was Moro’s professional partner as prosecutor of the case. Lava Jato. She starred in another of the star moments of the case, specifically the hunt for Lula. Dallagnol appeared to announce that Lula was Mr. benefited”) that still gives rise to memes. Elected deputy in 2022, in a few months he lost his seat due to irregularities.
Eduardo Cunha, 65 years old
He was the president of the Chamber of Deputies who accepted the impeachment petition against Rousseff for processing. Sentenced to more than half a century in prison, Eduardo Cunha spent more than three behind bars. Several of the sentences have been annulled. Disqualified, her daughter Danielle Cunha, 36, was elected deputy in 2022. He was there, supporting her.
Bolsonaro managed to get the two presidents of Congress that corresponded to him to keep in a drawer the more than one hundred impeachment petitions presented against him. And, without much fuss, the ultra, which had come to the presidency as the great champion against corruption, reduced the resources of the investigators and the case Lava Jato It languished until it became irrelevant. In recent times, the plot is only in the news due to the continuous annulments of judicial decisions.
The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court judge Teori Zavascki, who was instructing the Petrobras case, died in 2017 in a small plane accident. It was a shock. The case was handed over to a colleague. Because the court broadcast its deliberations live, the 11 judges became as famous as the soccer team. Following it as if it were the daily soap opera became a habit for those most hooked on politics. The Lava Jato It led judges to tighten some rules in one of the most guaranteeing judicial systems in the world.
Odebrecht and other large construction companies
The construction company Odebrecht, which had a secret department dedicated only to the payment and management of bribes, was investigated in the US for the case Lava Jato and reached a judicial agreement in New York, in 2017, in which he pleaded guilty. He accepted a fine of $2.6 billion, the largest ever imposed for corruption.
The president and grandson of the founder spent two and a half years in prison, convicted of bribing a good part of Latin America’s political elite. Released with an electronic anklet, he never returned to the public sphere. The company changed its name, it is now Novonor. The condemned companies lost their positions of preeminence in the business. The firms that managed to survive are trying on this tenth anniversary to renegotiate the fines that are still pending and even have the penalties imposed be reduced.
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