Page 18 - CORRUPTION LATAM

MONTT GROUP MAGAZINE - 2024
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BRaziL
tHe coMpLiance revoLution
due to one of the Worst cases of corruption in the WorLd, Lava Jato, braziL Was forced to dictate important reguLations on corporate compLiance, creating a true corporate revoLution. hoWever, the Latest events invoLving the canceLLation of sanctions once again soW doubt about the integrity of the Judiciary in that country.
Recently, a judge from the Supreme Court of Brazil declared “the absolute nullity” of all judicial acts carried out during the Lava Jato anti-corruption operation against Marcelo Odebrecht, former president of the construction company. Judge José Antonio Dias Toffoli, of the Supreme Federal Court, assessed that officials who participated in the investigation ignored “due process” in order to “guarantee their personal and political objectives.”
The decision undoes the actions against Marcelo Odebrecht by former federal judge Sergio Moro, who from his court in Curitiba commanded that anti-corruption operation that revealed a gigantic network of bribes paid by large construction companies to officials and politicians to obtain contracts in the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras and many other companies throughout Latin America.
The magistrate affirms that “given the content of the frequent dialogues” between Moro and the Lava Jato prosecutor, “specifically” about the businessman and the companies he presided over, “the mixture of the function of accusation
with that of judging is clear, eroding the bases of the democratic criminal process.” Toffoli stressed, however, that the nullity does not include the collaboration agreement signed by Marcelo Odebrecht during the investigation. This is the third decision that reverses what was resolved. In January, Toffoli suspended payment of fines equivalent to US$1,7 billion imposed on Odebrecht for his responsibility in that corruption scheme. A few months earlier, in September 2023, he annulled evidence from the confessions of Odebrecht executives that resulted from a collaboration agreement.
For analysts, Toffoli’s recent decisions show that they destroy the hope that once existed when the case was investigated and publicly punished with the utmost rigor, demonstrating to the world that Brazil was a benchmark in the fight against corruption. But today that approach is weakened, especially in light of recent discoveries such as that this same judge appears linked to Lava Jato. In 2019, Crusoé, a Brazilian investigative outlet, published an article about emails sent by the head of Odebrecht in 2007 that referred
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