38 The EconomistJuly 27th 2019
1I
f there isone thing voters wanted from
Jair Bolsonaro when they elected him
Brazil’s president last October it was to end
corruption. When he was a right-wing con-
gressional backbencher, his fulminations
against “os corruptos” helped make him
famous. In his inauguration speech on Jan-
uary 1st he promised to “free the country
from the yoke of corruption”.
Now, his plans to keep his most impor-
tant campaign promise are failing. That is
because his administration looks nearly as
scandal-prone as the one it replaced. One
of his sons, Flávio, a senator from Rio de Ja-
neiro (pictured left), is being investigated
for money-laundering. Messages leaked to
the Intercept, an investigative news web-
site, have damaged the reputation of Sérgio
Moro, the justice minister, who is in charge
of fighting corruption and crime. They
show that Mr Moro collaborated improper-
ly with prosecutors when he was the judge
in charge of the vast Lava Jato anti-corrup-
tion investigation. The operation led to the
jailing of more than 100 businessmen and
several politicians, including Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva, a former president.
The tourism minister is being investi-gated for putting up female paper candi-
dates in congressional and state elections
to get campaign funds meant for them. Mr
Bolsonaro nominated another son,
Eduardo, to be Brazil’s ambassador to the
United States, adding nepotism to his ad-
ministration’s list of sins.
The president can claim some success-
es, including progress on economic re-
form. He broke with past presidents’ prac-
tice of giving cabinet jobs in exchange for
support in congress. So far, that is his only
contribution to cleaner politics.
A low point came on July 16th, when
Dias Toffoli, a justice on the supreme court,
suspended the investigation of Flávio Bol-
sonaro. Police had identified an “excep-
tional increase” in his net worth tied to
property deals between 2014 and 2017,
when he was a state congressman. Sevenmillion reais ($2m) passed without expla-
nation through the bank account of his
driver, a friend of the president.
Mr Toffoli ruled that prosecutors need
permission from a judge to use financial
data collected by coaf, the government fi-
nancial-intelligence unit, and other agen-
cies. The supreme court has been consider-
ing since 2017 whether to issue such a
ruling. It is due to decide in November this
year. Mr Toffoli acted on his own after Flá-
vio’s lawyers joined the suit. The ruling
throws anti-corruption investigations into
a “state of instability and confusion”, says
Silvana Batini, a Lava Jato prosecutor from
Rio de Janeiro. It could also hinder probes
of money-laundering by drug gangs.
The president welcomed the decision to
suspend the case against his son. Other-
wise he has gone quiet on corruption. In
the second half of 2018 he tweeted 68 times
about corruption, according to the Elec-
tronic Government Laboratory at the Uni-
versity of Brasília. The number of tweets
dropped to 20 in the first half of this year. In
July there has so far been none.
Mr Moro, weakened by the leaks, has
said nothing about Mr Toffoli’s decision.
An anti-crime and corruption measure he
proposed is making little progress. The
committee responsible for it in the lower
house of congress has voted down one idea
to punish wrongdoing: writing into law the
requirement that people convicted of cor-
ruption begin their sentences if they lose
their first appeals, which does not always
happen now.
So far, Brazilians have not noticed thatBrazilCaving on corruption
SÃO PAULO
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