Tag Archives: Operation Car Wash

A Plan To Share FCPA Penalties with Brazil has Been Thwarted… by Brazil: The Supreme Court’s Invalidation of the Lava Jato Foundation

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A frequent criticism of how the US Department of Justice (DOJ) enforces the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is that the fines recovered typically go to the US Treasury, rather than being used to make reparations for the damages caused by corruption in the countries where the bribery took place. Those who hold that view were likely encouraged by the non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that the DOJ concluded with Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, in September 2018. The US enforcement action against Petrobras is a development of the so-called Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation, in which firms paid off some Petrobras’ senior employees to benefit them in the contracts they had with the oil company. Such senior employees also shared a portion of the briber of politicians and political parties. In Brazil, Petrobras (and its shareholders, including the Brazilian federal government) are considered the victims of this scheme, but the US DOJ considered Petrobras a perpetrator (as well as a victim), because Petrobras officials had facilitated the bribe payments, in violation of the FCPA. Thus, the DOJ brought an enforcement action against Petrobras, and the parties settled via an NPA that required Petrobras to pay over US$852 million in penalties for FCPA violations. But—and here is the interesting part—the NPA also stated that the US government would credit against this judgment 80% of the total (over US$682 million) that Petrobras would pay to Brazilian authorities pursuant to an agreement to be negotiated subsequently between Petrobras and the Brazilian authorities.

This unusual agreement was the result of unusually close cooperation between U.S. and Brazilian authorities, especially the Lava Jato Task Force (group of federal prosecutors handling a series of Petrobras-related cases). After the conclusion of the NPA between the DOJ and Petrobras, the Task Force then entered into negotiations with Petrobras and reached an agreement under which Petrobras would use US$682 million that it would otherwise owe to the US government to create a private charity, known unofficially as the Lava Jato Foundation, with the Foundation using half of the money to sponsor public interest initiatives, and the other half to compensate minority shareholders in Petrobras. According to the agreement, the Foundation would be governed by a committee of five unpaid members from civil society organizations, to be appointed by the Task Force upon judicial confirmation. Once created, the Task Forcewould have the prerogative to have one of its members sitting at the Foundation’s board.

This resolution of the Petrobras case seemed to be a win-win resolution and a promising precedent for future cases: The US imposed a hefty sanction for violation of US law, but most of the money would be used to help the Brazilian people, who are arguably the ones most harmed by Petrobras’s unlawful conduct. Yet this arrangement has proven extremely controversial in Brazil, both politically and legally. Indeed, the issue has divided the country’s own federal prosecutors: The Prosecutor General (the head of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, from which the Lava Jato Task Force enjoys a broad independence) challenged the creation of the Foundation as unconstitutional. She prevailed on that challenge in Brazil’s Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federalor STF), which suspended the operation of the Foundation.

What, exactly, was the legal argument against the creation of the Lava Jato Foundation, and what are the implications of the STF’s ruling for this approach to remediating the impacts of foreign bribery going forward?

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Brazil’s Supreme Court May Have Ended the Lava Jato Operation as We Know It

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This past March, Brazil’s Supreme Court (the Supremo Tribunal Federal, or STF) issued an opinion that is considered one of the most significant defeats yet to the anticorruption effort known as the Car Wash (or Lava Jato) operation (see here and here). The case involved allegations that the former mayor of Rio de Janeiro and his campaign manager received roughly USD 4 million from the construction firm Odebrecht that was used for a campaign slush fund, in exchange for business advantages in connection with certain construction projects. The particular legal claim on which the defendants prevailed concerned not a substantive issue, but rather a jurisdictional question: whether the case was brought in the wrong court. In Brazil, the ordinary federal courts adjudicate ordinary federal crimes, but there are also special electoral courts that handle violations—including criminal violations—of Brazil’s Electoral Code. The use of slush funds, though not expressly listed as one of the actions criminalized under the Electoral Code, could be prosecuted under the Electoral Code’s prohibition on false statements, because doing what the former mayor allegedly did would entail failure to report funds used in an election campaign. Such charges would ordinarily be heard by the specialized electoral courts. But taking illegal contributions to a campaign slush fund in exchange for political favors could also be charged as bribery (or associated crimes like money laundering) under Brazil’s Criminal Code—crimes that would typically be adjudicated by the regular federal courts. Given that the same wrongful transaction might entail violations of both the Electoral Code and the Criminal Code, which court (or courts) should hear the case?

This is the question that the STF had to resolve, and it had, roughly speaking, three options. First, the STF could have ruled that the whole case (both the electoral crimes and the ordinary crimes) should be heard by an ordinary court. The second option would be to require that the special electoral court adjudicate the whole criminal case, including the ordinary criminal charges. Third, the STF could have held that the case should be split, with an electoral court dealing with the alleged violations of the Electoral Code and an ordinary court handling all the other charges. In a 6-5 decision, the STF went with the second option, holding that whenever an ordinary crime is committed in connection with an electoral crime, the whole criminal case must be decided by an electoral court.

This is hugely significant for the Lava Jato operation, because many of the cases the operation has uncovered involve potential violations of the Electoral Code, in the form of illegal or undisclosed campaign contributions made in exchange for political favors. (The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo estimates  that almost 30% of Lava Jato’s rulings touch discussions of illegal campaign finance.) But although some cases related to Lava Jato have gone to the electoral courts, most of the cases, including all of the main criminal cases, have been prosecuted in the ordinary courts. Federal prosecutors, especially the Lava Jato task force, are very concerned about the STF’s decision and have criticized it as a significant blow to Brazil’s anticorruption efforts.

They are right to be worried. Although some have maintained that there is no serious cause for concern, in fact the STF’s decision poses a very serious problem, for several reasons.

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“Say It Ain’t So, Sergio!”: Judge Moro’s Appointment to the Bolsonaro Cabinet Is a Setback for Brazil’s Struggle Against Corruption

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Two weeks ago, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil. Likely no single factor explains Bolsonaro’s success, but as I noted in a previous post, disgust at the corruption of the Worker’s Party (the PT), which had been exposed by the so-called Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigation, likely played a significant part. The Lava Jato operation has brought to light shocking levels of corruption, mainly though not exclusively at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras, and has led to the convictions of scores of businesspeople and politicians. Some of the key figures involved in the Lava Jato operation, including prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and Judge Sergio Moro, have become national heroes, at least in some quarters. But their popularity is by no means universal. The fact that Lava Jato has investigated and convicted so many PT politicians, including former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), has led some PT members and sympathizers to accuse the investigators, prosecutors, and judges involved in the Lava Jato operation as engaged in a politically-motivated right-wing conspiracy against Lula, the PT, and the left generally. On this account, Lula is a “political prisoner,” and the impeachment and removal of his successor, President Dilma Rousseff, was a “coup.”

Many people, me included, have pushed back hard against the notion that the Lava Jato operation is a politically-motivated conspiracy. The evidence that has come too light seems incontrovertible, and while critics have identified a number of questionable decisions by the prosecutors and judges (criticisms I’m not in a position to evaluate on the merits), the notion that it’s all a politically motivated sham are baseless. Overall my impression, shared by many other domestic and international observers, is that the Lava Jato operation has been conducted with great professionalism. Yes, it’s true that the operation has targeted many PT figures, but Lava Jato has gone after politicians from across the political spectrum, and if PT politicians seem to make up a disproportionate share, this is most likely because the PT had held the presidency from 2003 to 2016, first under Lula and then under Dilma. Furthermore, many of us in the international community, along with a number of Brazilian anticorruption scholars and activists, worried that these unsubstantiated attacks on the integrity of Lava Jato—attacks that go beyond challenging individual decisions or rulings—would do serious damage to the longer-term development of an effective set of institutional checks and balances in Brazil. One doesn’t need to subscribe to a naïve view that prosecutors and judges are entirely “neutral” to recognize the importance of developing institutions of justice that are not, and are not perceived as, partisan or “political” in the crude sense.

It’s in that context that I was so disheartened to learn last week that Judge Moro had accepted President-Elect Bolsonaro’s appointment to serve as Minister for Justice. I have no reason to doubt Judge Moro’s integrity or to believe that he accepted this job for any reason other than because he believes it will give him an opportunity to serve his country. But I nonetheless fear that it was a mistake, one that will set back Brazil’s ongoing efforts to develop more robust anticorruption institutions. Continue reading →

Brazil’s Electoral Dilemma: Which Outcome Will Be Better for Anticorruption?

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My post last week expressed some dismay at the political situation in Brazil, and the role that understandable disgust at widespread corruption in the left-wing Worker’s Party (PT), which controlled the presidency from 2003 to 2016, seems to be playing in contributing to the astonishing electoral success of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro—whose extremist views, history of bigotry, violent rhetoric, and admiration for autocrats has led some to label him, with justification, as a quasi-fascist—was the top vote-getter in the first round of Brazilian’s two-round presidential election system, and he is favored to win the run-off against PT candidate Fernando Haddad on October 28. Though I’m no expert on Brazil or its politics, this situation—voter revulsion at the corruption of the mainstream parties leading to the rise of a tough-talking extremist—is distressingly familiar. It’s a pattern we’ve seen play out in several countries now, usually with quite unfortunate consequences. So, much as I believe that corruption is a serious problem, and tend to support aggressive anticorruption efforts—including the so-called Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigations in Brazil—I used my last post to express my dismay that anticorruption sentiments might propel someone like Bolsonaro to victory. Some things, I argued, are more important than corruption.

The post seems to have touched a nerve—I’ve gotten far more feedback on that post (some in the public comments section, some in private communications) than anything else I’ve written in the four and half years I’ve been blogging about corruption. While some of the comments have been the sort of substance-free invective one gets used to on the internet, a lot of people have provided useful, thoughtful, constructive criticism and pushback of various kinds. So I thought that perhaps it would be worth doing another post on this general topic, and connecting my thoughts about the current Brazilian political situation to some more general themes or problems that those of us who work on anticorruption need to confront, whether or not we have any particular interest in Brazil. Continue reading →

Guest Post–Assessing Corruption with Big Data

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Today’s guest post is from Enestor Dos Santos, principal economist at BBVA Research.

Ascertaining the actual level of corruption is not easy, given that it is usually a clandestine activity, and much of the available data is not comparable across countries or across time. Survey data on corruption experience can be helpful, but it is often limited to very specific kinds of corruption (such as petty bribery). Researchers and analysts have therefore, quite reasonably, tended to rely on subjective corruption perception data, such as Transparency International’s well-known Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). (The CPI aggregates corruption perception data from a variety of other sources, mostly expert assessments.) But conventional corruption perception measures (including those use to construct the CPI) have well-known problems, including limited coverage (with respect to both years and countries) and relatively low frequency (usually annual). And they rely on the perceptions of a handful of experts, which may not necessarily be representative. These limitations mean that while traditional perception measures like the CPI may be useful for some purposes, they are not as helpful for others, such as measuring the impact of individual events or news reports on corruption perceptions, or how changes in corruption perceptions affect government approval ratings.

To address these concerns, a recent study by BBVA Research, entitled Assessing Corruption with Big Data, offered an alternative, complementary type of corruption perceptions measure, based on Google web searches about corruption. To construct this index, we examined all web searches classified by Google Trends in the “Law and Government” category for individual countries, and calculated the proportion of those searches that contain the word “corruption” (in any language and including its misspellings and synonyms). Our index, which begins in 2004, covers more than 190 countries and, unlike traditional corruption indicators, is available in real-time and with high-frequency (monthly). Moreover, it can be reproduced very easily and at very low cost.

Here are some of our main findings: Continue reading →

Brazil: A Model for International Cooperation in Foreign Bribery Prosecutions

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Much ink has been spilled celebrating the extraordinary crackdown on corruption in Brazil over the past few years (including on this blog). Headlined by the massive Operation Car Wash (Portuguese: Lava Jato)—in which officials received nearly $3 billion in bribes to overcharge Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, for construction and service work—high-profile corruption investigations have swept through Brazil, threatening to upend its reputation as a bastion for unchecked graft. Although corruption in Brazil remains a serious problem, the extensive investigations have worked to elevate the nation as an inspiration for countries looking to address their own corrupt political systems and hoping to become “the next Brazil.”

In addition to the headline-grabbing investigations targeting the upper echelons of the Brazilian government, Brazilian authorities have also worked closely with U.S. authorities investigating bribery activity in Brazil, leading to significant penalties both under Brazilian law and under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This is a significant development, because it demonstrates the possibility for close collaboration on cross-border bribery cases between a developed country (usually on the “supply side” of transnational bribery cases) and a developing country (on the “demand side”). Commentators have complained that too often supply-side enforcers like the United States take an outsized role in transnational bribery cases, with the countries where the bribery takes place doing too little. Other commentators have cautioned that an increase in prosecutions by other countries, in the absence of some sort of global coordination mechanism, may lead to races to prosecution or to over-enforcement. China’s nearly $500 million fine of British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in 2014 for bribing Chinese doctors and hospitals was emblematic of these fears, providing an example of an aggressive, unilateral approach to demand-side enforcement – while putting DOJ in the unfamiliar position of pursuing FCPA violations as a cop late to the scene.

Through its recent enforcement actions, Brazil has provided a different model. While there have been successful joint enforcement actions in the past—such as the Siemens case—the recent series of coordinated U.S.-Brazil actions exhibit how developed and developing countries can work together in anti-bribery enforcement, sharing in the investigative responsibilities, negotiations with companies, and even the financial returns.

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Brazilian Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol on the Car Wash Investigation

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A couple months ago I was fortunate enough to host Deltan Dallagnol for a presentation and Q&A at Harvard Law School. Mr. Dallagnol is the lead prosecutor in Brazil’s “Car Wash” investigation into high-level corruption at Brazil’s state-owned oil company (and beyond). His remarks covered not only on the investigation itself, but also the institutional, political, and legal factors that have enabled (and sometimes hindered) that investigation. Fortunately, after a few weeks’ delay, Harvard Law School has made the video of the event available here. Mr. Dallagnol’s presentation will, I hope, be of interest to many of the blog readers.

I was particularly struck by his account of the degree of autonomy his office has, both legally and politically, as well as the importance of public opinion in safeguarding that autonomy — see our exchange at 17:53-22:05. That led into another interesting exchange about how much prosecutors involved in anticorruption investigations should speak to the media and comment more broadly on the corruption issues and engage in political advocacy (see 22:06-27:05).

(This was all very different from what would be the norm in the U.S., as you can see in my attempt to try to describe what the U.S. equivalent to what Mr. Dallagnol is doing in Brazil would look like, at 31:19-32:12.)

Lava Jato and Mani Pulite: Will Brazil’s Corruption Investigation End Up a Wash?

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Pop quiz:

Which corruption investigation was preceded by a massive outcry against corruption, was advanced by federal prosecutors making liberal use of the plea bargain, implicated hundreds of politicians (including former and current heads of state), raised serious questions about the role of the independent judiciary, and ultimately resulted in a dramatic political crisis that led to the replacement of a long-standing populist regime with a conservative government bent on reform?

If you guessed Brazil’s Lava Jato (English: Car Wash), you’d be correct.

But if you answered Italy’s Mani Pulite (English: Clean Hands), you’d also be right.

The similarities between the two anticorruption investigations and subsequent prosecutions are no coincidence. In 2004, Brazilian Judge Sérgio Moro, currently responsible for Lava Jato, penned an essay praising the Clean Hands operation, calling it “one of the most impressive judicial crusades against political and administrative corruption,” lamenting Brazil’s failure to engage in a crusade of similar import, and setting a roadmap for the country to do so, based largely on the perceived successful tactics of Italy’s Clean Hands.

Over the last three years, Brazil’s Car Wash operation has followed Moro’s roadmap. But, as Alberto Vannucci has pointed out, Clean Hands was far from an unqualified success—on the contrary, the headline-grabbing, establishment-shaking operation arguably left the country even more mired in corruption than before. Last year, GAB contributor Daniel Binette (channeling Vannucci) predicted that Brazil could face three major challenges in the wake of Car Wash: (1) a collapse of major political parties, (2) the remote possibility of a coup, as occurred in Thailand in 2014, and (3) a loss of public confidence in the anticorruption probe itself. Some of Binette’s predictions have proven prescient, while the accuracy of others remains to be seen.

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Leniency Agreements Under Brazil’s Clean Company Act: Are They a Good Idea?

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Brazil’s 2013 Clean Company Act, the country’s first anti-bribery statute applicable to companies, has grabbed Brazilians’ attention due to its recurrent use in the context of the so-called Car Wash operation. The Clean Company Act has provided the main legal basis for Brazilian public authorities (especially federal prosecutors) to sign leniency agreements with construction corporations whose top executives stand accused of bribing officials in exchange for contracts from Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil giant. Under the Act, Brazilian authorities may enter into a leniency agreement as long as the company admits its participation in the illicit act, ceases any further participation, provides full restitution for damage caused, and cooperates fully and permanently with the ongoing investigation. In exchange, the fines can be reduced by up to two-thirds and, more importantly, the cooperating company may be exempted from judicial and administrative sanctions, including suspension or debarment from public contracts. Over the course of the Car Wash investigation, Brazilian authorities have already signed five leniency agreements with some of Brazil’s largest engineering firms, and at least twelve more companies are currently negotiating leniency deals with Brazilian authorities.

But do these sorts of leniency agreements provide for sufficient deterrence of corrupt behavior? And are they consistent with the interest in punishing those companies that have committed a serious crime? Those who defend Brazil’s increasing use of leniency agreements emphasize that a similar approach has proven to be effective in countries like the United States, one of the most successful countries in the world in the fight against corruption. Indeed, the leniency agreements authorized by the Clean Company Act were modeled on the Non-Prosecution Agreements (NPAs) and Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) used by US authorities in white-collar criminal law enforcement. However, Brazil is following the US model precisely at a time when the widespread use of NPAs and DPAs is becoming more controversial, in part because of concerns that these sorts of agreements fail to deter economic crimes and allow high-ranking executives to escape accountability for their crimes (for a summary of the criticisms of those agreements, see here and here). Perhaps more importantly, even if one views the US experience with NPAs and DPAs as successful overall, there are several reasons why this model might be more problematic in the Brazilian context. Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Regions: Anticorruption Trends in Southeast Asia and Latin America

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OK, “best of times” and “worst of times” would be a gross exaggeration. But still, when I consider recent developments in the fight against corruption in Latin American and Southeast Asia, it seems that these two regions are moving in quite different directions. And the directions are a bit surprising, at least to me.

If you’d asked me two years ago (say, in the summer of 2014) which of these two regions provoked more optimism, I would have said Southeast Asia. After all, Southeast Asia was home to two jurisdictions with “model” anticorruption agencies (ACAs)—Singapore and Hong Kong—and other countries in the regions, including Malaysia and especially Indonesia, had established their own ACAs, which had developed good reputations for independence and effectiveness. Thailand and the Philippines were more of a mixed bag, with revelations of severe high-level corruption scandals (the rice pledging fiasco in Thailand and the pork barrel scam in the Philippines), but there were signs of progress in both of those countries too. More controversially, in Thailand the 2014 military coup was welcomed by many in the anticorruption community, who thought that the military would clean up the systemic corruption associated with the populist administrations of Thaksin Shinawatra and his successor (and sister) Yingluck Shinawatra—and then turn power back over to the civilian government, as the military had done in the past. And in the Philippines, public outrage at the brazenness of the pork barrel scam, stoked by social media, and public support for the Philippines’ increasingly aggressive ACA (the Office of the Ombudsman), was cause for hope that public opinion was finally turning more decisively against the pervasive mix of patronage and corruption that had long afflicted Philippine democracy. True, the region was still home to some of the countries were corruption remained pervasive and signs of progress were scant (such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar), but overall, the region-wide story seemed fairly positive—especially compared to Latin America where, aside from the usual bright spots (Chile, Uruguay, and to a somewhat lesser extent Costa Rica), there seemed to be precious little for anticorruption advocates to celebrate.

But now, in the summer of 2016, things look quite a bit different. In Southeast Asia, the optimism I felt two years ago has turned to worry bordering on despair, while in Latin America, things are actually starting to look up, at least in some countries. I don’t want to over-generalize: Every country’s situation is unique, and too complicated to reduce to a simple better/worse assessment. I’m also well aware that “regional trends” are often artificial constructs with limited usefulness for serious analysis. But still, I thought it might be worthwhile to step back and compare these two regions, and explain why I’m so depressed about Southeast Asia and so cautiously optimistic about Latin America at the moment.

I’ll start with the sources of my Southeast Asian pessimism, highlighting the jurisdictions that have me most worried: Continue reading →