40 The Americas The Economist April 9th 2022
seems vindicated. “I was wronged. I've al
ready proved my innocence,” he told The
Economist last year.
Not all are convinced. A survey in Feb
ruary found that 51% of all of those asked,
and 22% of those who had voted for the pt,
did not believe that the archiving of one of
the cases against Lula proved his inno
cence. His lawyers say this is because of a
“trial by media”. Critics say that he has not
been absolved. “Everything archived,
nothing cleared up”, read a recent headline
in one Brazilian weekly. The rags and machines humming
Consider the case of the Swedish planes.
One of Lula’s sons received 25m reais
($740,000) from a lobbyist, ostensibly to
promote American football. That lobbyist
was at the same time working for a Swed
ish planemaker which went on to win a
controversial tender for new fighter jets.
Prosecutors accused Lula, who had left of
fice at this point, of influencing his proté
gée and successor Dilma Rousseff to agree
to the deal. On March 2nd it became the last
case against Lula to be shelved, because of
tainted evidence.
Another case involved a country house
in Atibaia owned by business partners of
another one of Lula’s sons. Odebrecht, a
construction company, claimed it paid to
renovate it. Testimonies and court docu
ments placed Lula and his belongings at
the site. Someone at the institute which
bears Lula’s name received updates by
email about maintenance issues, skunk
traps and peacock chicks. Yet despite what
was presented in the trial, Mr Moro had not
received enough evidence to justify open
ing the case in the first place, said the Su
preme Court justice who refused to reopen
proceedings. Other cases could be revived
by the federal court, but that would take
years. Final judgment will probably come
from a historical study, not a court ruling.
Critics have a second, graver complaint
about Lula: that he presided over systemic
corruption. During his first term in office
the ptillegally used public money to pay
politicians a mensalão, or monthly sti
pend, in return for support of its pro
gramme. The policies they enacted helped
many Brazilians, but at a high moral cost.
Lava Jato also showed that under the pt
stateowned companies routinely awarded
padded contracts to corrupt firms, mostly
Odebrecht. Malu Gaspar, a journalist who
has written a book about the firm, de
scribes how Marcelo Odebrecht, its ceo,
asked the department of “Structured Oper
ations” (or the specialist bribery team) to
tot up its pt“donations”. In the final two
years of Lula’s government, these pay
ments amounted to 200m reais (around
$115m in 2010).
Lula has always maintained that he did
not know about either the policy of mensa-lão or the Odebrecht payments. But two of
his chiefs of staff, Antonio Palocci and José
Dirceu, were at the heart of both scandals.
In public, Lula decried Odebrecht as a
“criminal organisation”. However on the
company’s spreadsheet of colourful code
names, their accountants called him “Ami
go”; after he left office he toured Africa and
Latin America on their dime.
But it would be “very inaccurate” to say
that only the ptbehaved in this way, says
Caio Rodriguez, Odebrecht’s lead counsel
during Lava Jato. The investigation mainly
focused on them because they were in the
federal government. But he notes that, in
terms of quantity, the bribes Odebrecht
gave at a state level to the main opposition
group, the Party of Brazilian Social Democ
racy, were roughly the same. In terms of
the numbers of legislators investigated,
the grubbiest was one of Mr Bolsonaro’s
old parties, the Progressive Party, not the
pt. Historically, too, “there is no differ
ence” between the ptand previous govern
ments, says Fernando Limongi, a sociolo
gist. It was “business as usual”.
If Lula wins, will it be different this
time? A lot will depend on how much Lava
Jato has disrupted the usual state of affairs.
One significant change is that firms that
bribe politicians now face crippling legal
and financial punishments if they are
caught. That may deter future wrongdoing.
Yet despite the headlines, Lava Jato did
not end impunity in Brazil. It investigated
and prosecuted individuals, partly by us
ing similar methods to American anticor
ruption taskforces, such as plea bargain
ing. But it was unable to root out a culture
of corruption. The powerful fought back.
Blunders and lapses by prosecutors, in
cluding Mr Moro, have led to hundreds of
convictions being overturned. Political
meddling in the investigation has weak
ened trust in the justice system. Briberyand embezzlement continue, and the pub
lic no longer care as much as they did. Cor
ruption was for years the number one issue
for voters; surveys now rank it fifth or
sixth. With inflation at 11%, they have other
problems to worry about.
And although Mr Bolsonaro came to
power promising to vanquish graft, he has
quietly capitalised on the backlash against
Lava Jato. The president has hobbled key
institutions which fight against corrup
tion, replacing their leaders and reducing
their powers. He fired the head of the fed
eral police. Mr Moro says this was to stop
an investigation into his sons. Mr Bolsona
ro denies it. Mr Moro quit as justice minis
ter in protest. Finally, by creating a “secret
budget”, Mr Bolsonaro has served up mil
lions of dollars in pork to some of the dirti
est members of Congress. In 2020 he an
nounced the end of Lava Jato for good.At the car wash
Anticorruption efforts are now weaker
than they have been for years, says Bruno
Brandão of Transparency International
Brazil, a watchdog that championed Lava
Jato. Lula may try to reverse this decline,
reckons Silvana Batini, who was on the La
va Jato task force in Rio de Janeiro. As pres
ident—and unlike Mr Bolsonaro—Lula ap
pointed a prosecutorgeneral from a non
partisan shortlist. He strengthened the
federal police. After huge protests in 2013
Ms Rousseff introduced the law which laid
the foundations for Lava Jato. Despite the
corruption within its own ranks, the pt
bolstered the institutions that eventually
brought them down.
Lula is unlikely to give a nuanced expla
nation of all this to voters, let alone a mea
culpa. Instead he is suing people. On March
22nd he won damages from Mr Dallagnol,
the prosecutor in the leaked memos, for a
defamatory PowerPoint the latter had pre
sented before any case had been opened.
Lula’s lawyers called the compensation “a
symbol of the historical reparation that is
due”. Their client called his accusers “mes
sianic brats”. Three other cases against de
tractors are pending.
On March 31st Mr Moro, who pitched
himself as a “third way” candidate for the
presidency, announced he would suspend
his campaign. A few days later, he seemed
to change his mind. Such indecision in
creases the likelihood of a showdown be
tween Lula and Mr Bolsonaro, and also of a
tighter race. It is a contest which will make
strange bedfellows. Before Mr Bolsonaro
became president, Geraldo Alckmin, the
former governor of São Paulo, said that Lu
la returning to power would mean going
back “to the scene of the crime”. Now Mr
Alckmin is expected to be Lula’s running
mate. His volteface may smack of oppor
tunism. But in October many Brazilians
may end up making a similar choice.n