Brazil shuts down corruption-fighting task force
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s Federal Police announced last week that it will shut down a crusading anti-corruption task force, drawing a rebuke from prosecutors who warned that the move could throttle investigations that have exposed systemic corruption among the country’s political and business elites.
The decision comes as President Michel Temer, who is among the politicians facing criminal charges stemming from the unit’s work, is scrambling to shore up support among lawmakers to avoid trial over bribery allegations.
The Federal Police, which announced the shift Thursday, characterized it as a bureaucratic reshuffling of personnel and resources that would increase efficiency. In a statement, it said that members of the team known as the Lava Jato, or Car Wash, task force would be absorbed into the organization’s main anti-corruption division to more effectively “fight against corruption and money laundering and facilitate the exchange of information.”
Members of the task force, the country’s national association of prosecutors and the federation of Federal Police officers scoffed at that rationale.
Lava Jato prosecutors issued a statement calling the decision a “clear setback” for a team that is in the process of reviewing mounds of evidence and prioritizing scores of new leads.
Since its establishment in 2014, the group, based in the southern city of Curitiba, has operated with a remarkable degree of autonomy, upending a deeply rooted system of kickbacks and patronage that cut across the country’s political and business classes. Its investigations have reverberated well beyond Brazil, as evidence and cooperating witnesses have exposed bribery schemes at prominent Brazilian companies that had major business projects throughout the Americas.
The investigation, which started as a routine inquiry into money laundering at a gas station, has ensnarled Petrobras, the national oil company, along with more than 280 people, including scores of lawmakers and some of Brazil’s wealthiest magnates.