How a Scandal That Started in Brazil is Now Roiling other Latin American Countries
How a Scandal That Started in Brazil is Now Roiling other Latin American Countries
"What was unique about Odebrecht was that they got caught," said AS/COA’s Brian Winter on Brazil’s graft scandal.
BRASILIA — Some of the world’s most iconic companies cast themselves as emblems of their nation’s values — all-American Coca-Cola, for instance, or quintessentially Japanese Toyota. And for a while, that was also true of the Brazilian construction behemoth Odebrecht. In a good way.
Odebrecht was on a cloud during the first decade of the millennium, when Brazil won hosting rights to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, affirming its status as a rising star. With the charismatic President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva touting Odebrecht abroad, the company secured lucrative foreign contracts to build highways, transportation systems, stadiums and power plants.
But Odebrecht’s other export was Brazilian-scale corruption, undermining countries it was supposed to be building up. The company is today at the core of Brazil’s biggest-ever graft scandal, a $2 billion kickback scheme in which nearly 100 executives and politicians have been imprisoned….
…The case, known as “Car Wash,” has been a breakthrough for judicial independence in Brazil, garnering broad public support. Whether it will lead to cleanups or coverups elsewhere has become a barometer of good governance across Latin America. So far, there have been few arrests outside Brazil, but prosecutors in several countries in the region are pressing for more information from Brazilian investigators and former company executives.
“The scale of what Odebrecht did was unique, but it’s not like the Lula government or Odebrecht invented corruption in Latin America,” said Brazil expert Brian Winter, editor of the Americas Quarterly journal. “What was unique about Odebrecht was that they got caught.”…
