The notorious group of Brazilian prosecutors who led Operation Lava Jato was officially dismantled on Wednesday, marking the symbolic end of an investigation unit that was initially praised for its work to fight impunity among the country’s political and business elite and that it aa she was later accused of being biased in her investigations.
Operation Lava Jato began in March 2014 to investigate black market transactions involving a gas station in the capital Brasilia, but they soon discovered billions of dollars in bribes related to construction contracts awarded by the state oil company Petrobras.
Investigators found that much of the illicit funds went to party boxes and politicians’ pockets.
The unit shared its findings with other nations, which have supported the fight against corruption throughout the region.
Former Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil; Alejandro Toledo, from Peru; Ricardo Martinelli, of Panama; and Mauricio Funes, from El Salvador, were sent to prison as a result of the investigations, as were some of the senior executives of major construction companies such as Odebrecht, Andrade Gutiérrez, Queiroz Galvão and Camargo Correa. Odebrecht recently changed its name to Novonor.
The federal prosecutor’s office for the state of Paraná said in a statement that the nine members of the group had been transferred to the Gaeco unit, which fights organized crime. Five of them will continue to conduct Lava Jato investigations, while the rest will take on completely new tasks.
“The working group in Paraná ceases to exist, but some of its members will work with Gaeco in order to continue its work,” the statement said.
There have also been smaller Lava Jato investigations in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Prosecutors in Rio will be absorbed by Gaeco, while those in Sao Paulo resigned en masse last year.
Operation Lava Jato in Paraná resulted in 295 arrests, charges against 533 people and culminated in prison sentences for 174 people, according to the statement. In addition, more than 4.3 billion reais ($ 800 million) were recovered in funds related to corruption.
The Intercept Brasil news site published messages released in 2019, revealing that Sergio Moro, who at one time was the federal judge leading the investigation in Paraná, collaborated with prosecutors Lava Jato in ways that could have gone further. far away. . The country’s highest court is expected to decide in the coming months whether these convictions should be overturned on the basis of these disclosures.
Lula was imprisoned in April 2018, leaving him out of that year’s presidential race. The winner of this election, Jair Bolsonaro, respected the law and order of one of his campaign themes and promised to make Lava Jato part of his government’s anti-corruption infrastructure.
Moro became his justice minister, but resigned in April last year after claiming the president had tried to intervene improperly in the federal police.
Meanwhile, the pace of Lava Jato’s investigations has slowed. Bolsonaro said in October last year that the operation was coming to an end because his government was free of corruption.
Prosecutor General Augusto Aras, who is seen by many independent prosecutors as being too close to Bolsonaro and has long criticized the aggression with which the unit acted, denied that the Lava Jato working group had been dismantled.
“The truth is that Gaeco makes the group’s activities institutional, which they did not have,” Aras said at a ceremony in Brasilia. “The members are the same, with the guarantees of remaining in office for two years, with projects that have a beginning, a means and an end.”
Fabiano Angelico, a corruption investigator and former adviser to Transparency International in Brazil, said Lava Jato prosecutors would face greater difficulties in the new system, of which Aras did not clearly define how it works.
Angelico pointed out that crucial members of the group made mistakes that led to the dismemberment of the unit, including a marked political tendency.
He added, however, that thanks to them, Brazilians understand for the first time what happens when bribery is widely exposed and how power structures are mobilized to stop investigations.
“Political leaders did nothing with the results of the investigation, including Bolsonaro,” Angelico said. “The fight against corruption is a political weapon. Once its political use is exhausted, it tends to lose its importance and this is what happened in this case.