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Lava Jato Operation) DOCUMENT #2 EXCERPTS OF ARTICLES IN THE INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL MEDIA ABOUT THE CAR WASH OPERATION (LAVA JATO OPERATION) The Lava Jato Operation already became much more than a criminal corruption investigation, having contributed to change the mindsets of Brazilian people by enhancing their trust in public institutions - which are becoming more accountable, effective and transparent. Respected international media institutions are covering the impact of the Car Wash Operation and its influence in Brazil and Latin America, having generated requests for technical cooperation from more than 35 countries in all regions. The Car Wash Operation has been positively depicted and praised by The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and other newspapers and magazines representing a wide media spectrum. In addition, the Car Wash Operation has been featured in the TV Show “60 Minutes”, as well as in other languages/countries - France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and many others. Please find below a selection of media articles which reflect from an independent perspective the scope and impact of this initiative. June 1st, 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this- the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history (Article below) Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history? Jonathan Watts Thu 1 Jun 2017 00.30 EDT On 14 January 2015, police agent Newton Ishii was waiting in Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão airport to meet the midnight flight from London. His mission was simple. A former executive of Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras, was on the plane. Ishii was to arrest him as soon as he set foot in Brazil and take him for questioning by detectives. No big deal, the veteran cop thought as he ticked off the hours in the shabby Terminal One lounge. This was just one of many anti-bribery operations he had worked on. Usually they made a few headlines, then faded away, leaving the perpetrators to carry on as if nothing had happened. There was a popular expression for this: acabou em pizza (to end up with pizza), which suggested that there was no political row that could not be settled over a meal and a few beers. When the plane finally landed, Ishii’s target was easy to identify among the passengers in the arrivals hall. Nestor Cerveró has a strikingly asymmetrical face, with his left eye set lower than the right. “He couldn’t believe it. He said I had made a mistake,” Ishii recalled later. “I told him I was just doing my job and that he could take up his complaints with the judge.” Cerveró called his brother and a lawyer. He expected to be free before morning. Ishii, too, had few illusions that his suspect would be locked up for long. Decades on the force had taught him how quickly the rich and powerful could wriggle off the hook. There was little reason to think this case would be any different. As it turned out, both men were wrong. The investigation that led to Cerveró’s arrest – codenamed Lava Jato (Car Wash) – was about to uncover an unprecedented web of corruption. At first, the press described it as the biggest corruption scandal in the history of Brazil; then, as other countries and foreign firms were dragged in, the world. The case would go on to discover illegal payments of more than $5bn to company executives and political parties, put billionaires in jail, drag a president into court and cause irreparable damage to the finances and reputations of some of the world’s biggest companies. It would also expose a culture of systemic graft in Brazilian politics, and provoke a backlash from the establishment fierce enough to bring down one government and leave another on the brink of collapse. Launched in March 2014, the operation had initially focused on agents known as doleiros (black market money dealers), who used small businesses, such as petrol stations and car washes, to launder the profits of crime. But police soon realised they were on to something bigger when they discovered that the doleiros were working on behalf of an executive at Petrobras, Paulo Roberto Costa, the director of refining and supply. This link led prosecutors to uncover a vast and extraordinarily intricate web of corruption. Under questioning, Costa described how he, Cerveró and other Petrobras directors had been deliberately overpaying on contracts with various companies for office construction, drilling rigs, refineries and exploration vessels. The contractors they were paying had formed an agreement to ensure they were guaranteed business on excessively lucrative terms if they agreed to channel a share of between 1% and 5% of every deal into secret slush funds. Oil executive Nestor Cerveró, whose arrest marked a turning point in the Car Wash corruption investigation. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty After diverting millions of dollars into those funds, Petrobras directors then used them to funnel money to the politicians who had appointed them in the first place, and to the political parties they represented. The main objective of the racket – which fleeced taxpayers and shareholders out of billions of dollars – was to fund election campaigns to keep the governing coalition in power. But it wasn’t just politicians who benefited. Everyone connected to the deals received a bribe, in cash, or sometimes in the form of luxury cars, expensive art works, Rolex watches, $3,000 bottles of wine, yachts and helicopters. Huge sums were deposited in Swiss bank accounts, or laundered via overseas property deals or smaller companies. The means of transfer were deliberately complicated, in order to hide the money’s origins, or low-tech, to keep it off the books. Prosecutors discovered that elderly mules were flying from city to city with shrink-wrapped bricks of cash strapped to their bodies. Petrobras was no ordinary company. As well as having the highest market valuation (and the largest debts) of any corporation in Latin America, it was a flagship for an emerging economy that was trying to tap the biggest oil discovery of the 21st century – huge new oil fields in deep waters off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Petrobras accounted for more than an eighth of all investments in Brazil, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction firms, shipyards and refineries, and forming business ties with international suppliers including Rolls-Royce and Samsung Heavy Industries. Petrobras was also at the centre of Brazil’s politics. During the 2003-2010 presidency of the Workers’ Party leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), executive posts in Petrobras were offered to Lula’s political allies, to help build support in Congress. Petrobras’s commercial and strategic importance was such that the US National Security Agency made it a target for surveillance. As the Car Wash investigation was to prove, if you could unravel the secrets of this company, you would unravel the secrets of the state. First, though, investigators had to get executives to talk. Until very recently, that would have been unthinkable. A culture of impunity had long reigned in Brazil. But times were changing, as Petrobras executive Nestor Cerverò was about to find out. When he saw the state of the mattress in the airport detention centre, he threw a tantrum. “How am I going to lie on this?” he said. “It’s either that or sleep standing up,” Ishii replied. Within an hour, Cerverò had dozed off, only to be shaken out of his slumber at 6am. “Where’s my breakfast?” he demanded. “You’re not getting one,” Ishii answered. “I’m taking you to Curitiba.” Curitiba, the heart of the Car Wash investigation, is the capital of the southern state of Paraná. By Brazilian standards, at 845km it is not far from Rio, but culturally, they are worlds apart. Curitiba is known as the “London of Brazil” because its people are considered more inclined to be sticklers for the rules than residents of the bigger cities in the north. In recent years, it has won international praise for its pioneering public transport system, environmental policies and hipster scene. Thanks to Operation Car Wash, however, it is now best known for its judges, prosecutors and police. Without one simple reform, however, the investigation might never have taken off. Dilma Rousseff took over from Lula as leader of the Workers’ Party and became president of a coalition government after the 2010 election. In the wake of nationwide anti-corruption demonstrations in 2013, Rousseff had tried to placate an angry public by fast-tracking laws aimed at rooting out systemic fraud. New measures included, for the first time in Brazil, plea bargaining: prosecutors could now make deals with suspects, reducing their sentences in return for information that could lead to the arrest of more important figures. Overseeing the case in Curitiba was Sérgio Moro, an ambitious young judge who helped prosecutors put pressure on suspects by approving lengthy “preventive detentions”. In the overwhelming majority of cases, Brazilian prisoners remanded in custody before trial are poor. Moro took the unusual step of also denying bail to the rich. Ostensibly, he did so to stop them using economic or political influence to escape any charges against them. However, the pressure was on them: make a deal or stay in jail. Cerveró was not the first to face this choice. He joined a parade of VIP Car Wash suspects – corporate executives, wealthy entrepreneurs and, later, even one or two powerful politicians – who spent months inside the Curitiba detention centre. They had to be kept separate from other inmates for their own safety, which meant their side of the jail quickly became overcrowded.
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