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Corruption in Brazil exists on all levels of society from the top echelons of political power (as seen in the Mensalão Scandal and the Operation Car Wash and the Petrobras scandal) to the smallest municipalities. The Operation Car Wash showed how central government members used prerogatives embedded in their public mandate to extract rents, ranging from political support to the syphoning out of state-owned corporation funds for personal gain. In specific, Mensalão evinced the practice of transferring taxpayers funds in the form of monthly allowances to congress members of other political parties in consideration and exchange for their support and votes within the congress. The latter has unraveled how politicians used the state-owned and run oil company of Petrobras to raise hundreds of millions of reais for political campaigns and personal enrichment. Corruption in Brazil is nothing new, although the scale and systematic implementation of political corruption over the last decade is unprecedented. The Supreme court member Gilmar Mendes famously said the PT (labor party)-led governments of Lula and Dilma installed a kleptocracy in Brasil.
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All types of corruption exist. Clientilism, cronyism and nepotism☃☃ are widespread in Brazil, and many critics even mention how some of the members of Brazilian Supreme Court are seen openly mingling with politicians. Bribery (called propina or suborno in Portuguese) is also rife in the police force☃☃ and throughout the Brazilian bureaucracy☃☃. But one of the most common types of corruption in Brazil is embezzlement of public funds through overbilling, called "superfaturamento" in Portuguese (literally "super invoicing"). This technique allows individuals to make financial gains, but also finance political campaigns (as seen in the Petrobras scandal) and is closely linked to public contracts with private enterprises. Construction is the prime example, for example in building roads, sewage, and public buildings. It's estimated that a mind-boggling 30% of all Brazilian public funds are embezzled this way each year.
The scale of corruption in Brazil is immense. But largely under-reported in the media and historically not investigated, prosecuted or punished. So it's difficult to estimate just how large the problem is. Thanks to the Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigation, this trend may be changing. Corruption in Brazil increases the already enormous Brazilian shadow economy that by some sources is estimated to 16.1% of the gross domestic product, a number that probably needs to be adjusted up considerably if corruption as such is to be counted as part of the shadow economy.
According to Transparency International's 2015 corruption index, an index that ranks countries according to people's perception of confidence/corruption, Brazil ties with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, India, Thailand, Tunisia, and Zambia, ranking 76th among 168 countries.
Corruption was cited among many issues that provoked the 2013 protests.
Corruption directly affects the well-being of Brazilian citizens since it reduces public investments in health, education, infrastructure, security, housing, among other essential rights, expanding social exclusion and inequality.
Political corruption
Political corruption is widespread in Brazil, and at all levels of politics. You can divide political corruption in Brazil into two main categories. Political corruption at the national level and political corruption on state and municipal level. The national level involves the government, the ministeries, the Senate and the Congress in addition to all state owned companies.The state and municipal levels include all 27 states and their administration, plus all city councils.
The cases of Petrobras (which appeared with Operation Car Wash) and Mensalão serve as important pointers to how Brazilian politics and political corruption in Brazil works. Politics in Brazil is closely linked to corruption. It is a way for political parties and politicians to finance elections, get votes, get a political base in congress and personally enrich themselves. The Petrobras example shows that a broad specter of congress members from all the major political parties, but controlled by central figures in the government, interfered with internal buying procedures in Petrobras and distributed contracts to private firms for a "commission" in return. It was discovered that virtually all major contracts for the state-owned oil company passed through this process. In this way, Petrobras regularly overpaid for services. This money was distributed to political parties as well as politicians and certain central Petrobras employees.
This type of corruption is called "superfaturamento" in Brazil, and is a very common practice for politicians and civil servants that are in charge of contracting and buying for public institutions. You can see examples of this even in small primary schools where products like pencils and notebooks are bought with invoices that show a padded value, as well as in grand-scale construction such as public buildings, roads, power and sewage systems, metro-systems, football stadiums(not least in connection with the World Cup in 2014), etc. It seems as if all areas of public spending is systematically corrupted in this way which suggests how deeply corruption in Brazil is rooted. A particularly symbolic example is the city of Brasilia itself, which historians believe was systematically overpriced when built in the early 1960s.
Operation Car Wash
Operation Car Wash is an investigation being carried out by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba Branch, and judicially ordered by Judge Sérgio Moro on March 17, 2014. Initially a money laundering investigation, it has expanded to cover allegations of corruption at the state-controlled Petrobras, where executives took bribes for awarding contracts to construction firms at inflated prices. The operation has included more than a hundred search warrants, temporary and preventive detention and coercive measures, with the aim of ascertaining a money laundering scheme suspected of moving more than R$38.1 billion" (approximately US$11.3bn) as of November 22, 2016. Because of the exceptionality of its actions, lawyers accuse the operation of "selectivity" and "partiality", and of being "a criminal case that violated minimum rules of defense for a large number of defendants".
Throughout the investigation, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who chaired the board of Petrobras from 2003 to 2010, denied knowledge of any wrongdoing The Brazilian Supreme Court authorized the investigation of 48 current and former legislators, including former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in March 2016.
Operation Car Wash has severely impacted Brazilian politics, resulting in the arrest of several important political figures, including:
Legal framework
To counteract widespread corruption in the private and public sector, Brazil enacted the Clean Company Act 2014 (Law No. 12, 846), which held companies responsible for the corrupt practices of their employees and liable without a finding of fault. Bid rigging and fraud are prohibited in public procurement, as well as bribery of Brazilian public officials. If found guilty of corruption the companies can be suspended, dissolved or fined.