Brazil’s biggest anti-corruption investigation is at a turning point

FOR FIVE years Lava Jato (Car Wash), a sprawling anti-corruption investigation, has dominated headlines in Brazil. It ended political careers, led to the lockingup of company bosses and helped make possible last year the election of Jair Bolsonaro, a low-ranking right-wing congressman, to Brazil’s presidency. He fulminated against corruption during the campaign, but the investigation itself disappeared from the headlines. The arrest last month of Michel Temer, a former president, brought it back. Prosecutors say he ran a scheme that embezzled up to 1.8bn reais ($427m) over four decades, including during his presidency in 2016-18. Mr Temer denies the charges. A judge released him while the investigation continues.

Lava Jato began as a routine money-laundering case in the southern city of Curitiba. It led to revelations that construction companies had paid billions of dollars in bribes to politicians in exchange for lucrative contracts with Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company. Prosecutors in Curitiba have won convictions of 155 people, and prison sentences totalling more than 2,000 years. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president from the left-wing Workers’ Party, is serving jail sentences totalling 25 years in the city. Investigations in Curitiba and in other cities have led to scores of convictions and billions of dollars in fines (see table overleaf). Brazilian prosecutors have helped foreign ones pursue related cases, especially in Peru. Mr Bolsonaro appointed Sérgio Moro, the judge who jailed Lula, to be his justice minister.