Backlash Poses Threat to Brazil’s War on Corruption
Backlash Poses Threat to Brazil’s War on Corruption
"There has been a failure to reform the political system where corruption remains endemic," said AS/COA's Roberto Simon about Brazil and its position in the CCC Index.
Brazil has developed Latin America’s strongest tools to fight corruption but a political backlash is threatening its ability to keep up the war on graft, according to the authors of a new study.
The Capacity to Combat Corruption Index, launched by think-tank the Americas Society and Control Risks, a consultancy, aims to measure how well leading Latin American countries fight
corruption. It ranks countries on their legal capacity, democracy and political institutions and the vibrancy of civil society and the media.
Although Chile leads the index overall, Brazil — home to the giant ‘Lava Jato’ (car wash) corruption probe — scored highest of the eight countries surveyed on its legal capacity to fight corruption.
Investigators in the Lava Jato scandal discovered one of the world’s biggest webs of corruption. At its centre sat the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which admitted paying more than
$780m of bribes in 12 Latin American countries to secure contracts...
