InvestigationA magistrate judged to be “biased”, a team of prosecutors whose methods were sometimes illegal, the intervention of the United States, and finally a resounding scandal: “Lava Jato” has served many interests, but not democracy. Months of investigation, interviews and research were necessary for “Le Monde” to set the scene behind the scenes.
Something is rotten in the state of Brazil. The entire country is being hit by a series of simultaneous crises, a kind of perfect storm – economic recession, environmental disasters, extreme political polarization, Covid-19 … and now the sinking of the judicial system. Another thunderclap in an already heavy sky that had nevertheless been filled with hope seven years ago, when a young judge named Sergio Moro had launched, on March 17, 2014, a vast anti-corruption operation called “Lava Jato” (“Car Wash”), involving the oil giant Petrobras, construction companies and an impressive number of political leaders.
In one fell swoop, the impetuous man and his team of prosecutors, supported by the judiciary and the media, were going, at last, to clean up and save Brazil! Numbers were impressive: 1,450 arrest warrants were issued, 533 indictments filed and 174 people convicted. No less than twelve Brazilian, Peruvian, Salvadorian and Panamanian heads of state or ex-heads of state were implicated. And the colossal sum of 4.3 billion reais (610 million euros) was recovered to the public coffers in Brasilia. Even former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, adored by a majority of Brazilians, could not resist the wave, as he found himself behind bars.
And then suddenly, nothing, or almost nothing. In less than two months, the sprawling investigation collapsed like a soufflé. At the beginning of February, the federal Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the end of the “Lava Jato”, dismantling its main team of prosecutors with a coldness that was unheard of. Then a Supreme Court justice ordered that the charges against Lula be dropped. Fifteen days later, on March 23, it was the turn of Brazil’s highest court to rule that Judge Moro had been “Biased” in his investigation.
Irregularities and confusion
The world’s largest anti-corruption investigation, as one Supreme Court justice called it, has become the biggest judicial scandal in the country’s history. After more than seven years of proceedings, the very heart of the Brazilian justice system has just disavowed the form and substance, opening up an abyss of questions about its methods, its means and its choices.
Certainly, the news site The Intercept – created by Rio de Janeiro-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald and Silicon Valley billionaire Pierre Omidyar – has not stopped pointing out the irregularities and errors in the investigation over the past two years.
One hundred and eight articles published to date have, in turn, lifted the veil on the compromising messages exchanged between the prosecutors and Judge Moro, shed a harsh light on the links maintained, sometimes outside of any legal framework, by Brazilian prosecutors with agents of the US Department of Justice (DoJ), and highlighted the political bias of certain members of the “Lava Jato”, obsessed with the idea of blocking the Workers’ Party (PT). The very serious and independent Agência Publica, the investigative journalism agency founded in São Paulo by women reporters, also showed how the proceedings were marred by irregularities and numerous confusions. After these striking revelations, there remains a strong taste of unfinished business, the sensation of a failed trial and an ontological mess for an investigation that was meant to be a model of its kind.
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