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As stated in the lead, the Car Wash scandal begun as an money laundering investigation but it grew out to be the biggest corruption scandal in Latin-America. The investigation was at first mainly focused on four black-market currency dealers. After it was found out that one of those black-market currency dealers Alberto Youssef acquired a Range Rover Evoque for Paulo Roberto Costa who was the former director of Petrobas, the investigation expanded to a national scandal in Brazil. Mr. Costa agreed at the end to provide evidence for the investigation about what he experienced as former director(1). This was mostly because of the newly adapted law, that introduced 'Rewarded Collaboration' in Brazil, which reduced sentence when the defendant collaborated. Mr. Costa collaboration illuminated the way political parties control the state-oil company Petrobas (2). It also led to a wave of arrests, from Mr. Costa agreeing to help in 2014 until February 2016 the Federal Prosecution Service formulated 37 criminal charges against 179 people. This number is still growing and consists mostly of politicians and businessmen (3). In December 2017 nearly three hundred people have been accused for crimes involving this corruption scandal (4).

Brazil isn’t the only country where the corruption scandal occurred, at least 11 other countries, mostly in Latin-America were involved. Although it started with the bribery scheme of Petrobas in Brazil, it became clear that the company Odebrecht, was in the center of this complete scandal. Which led to the transformation of a Brazilian scandal into a continental scandal (5). Marcelo Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. After this he and other Odebrecht executives were willing to act as witnesses and to give information about the complete corruption scheme, again made possible because of the ‘Rewarded Collaboration’ Law. It became clear that Odebrecht had a secret branch that was used for all kinds of corruption, like illegal payments to secure contracts in several countries in Latin America. The political color of the party ruling the country didn’t matter for Odebrecht as long as they retrieved contracts. Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela to Ricardo Martinelli’s Panama, contrasting each other in political views but both accepting Odebrecht’s money (5).

The corruption scandal grew out to be such a big scandal partly because of it addressing those politicians and businessmen who were thought to have immunity. Addressing the corruption of this political and economic elite led to a different view in Brazil of the structural imbedded corruption in the political and economic system. Instead of tolerance and acceptance of the impunity the elite had experienced they were now being investigated and charged. The reason why this change could happen is mostly because of the independence of the judicial branch (3). Judge Sergio Moro led the investigation ‘Car Wash’ and because of him and the federal prosecutors the seemingly immune politicians have been accused, including former presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef of Brazil (3). This was made happen because of the ‘rewarded collaboration’ and the strategy to first target businesspeople and then to use their statements against the politicians (5).

Kamm, T. (2015). Making sense of Brazil’s Lava Jato scandal. Brunswick Group, April. Arruda de Almeida, M., & Zagaris, B. (2015). Political Capture in the Petrobus Corruption Scandal: The Sad Tale of an Oil Giant. Fletcher F. World Aff., 39, 87.

Fausto, S. (2017). The Lengthy Brazilian Crisis Is Not Yet Over. Issue Brief, 2.

Felter, C. & Labrador, R. C. (2018). Brazil’s Corruption Fallout. Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/brazils-corruption-fallout Kurtenbach, S., & Nolte, D. (2017). Latin America’s Fight against Corruption: The End of Impunity. GIGA Focus Lateinamerika, (03).