Anticorruption in Brazil: From Transnational Legal Order to Disorder (original) (raw)
Related papers
Brazil in the Global Anticorruption Regime, RBPI (2018)
Brazilian anticorruption law and institutions were significantly transformed in recent decades. This article traces those transformations and explains how the international anticorruption and money laundering regimes contributed to their development. It argues that those international regimes were internalised in the Brazilian system through three mechanisms: inspiration and legitimation, coercion, and implementation support, and were critical to the transformation of Brazilian institutions.
Transnational Anticorruption Law in Action: Cases from Argentina and Brazil
Law & Social Inquiry, 2014
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the “institutional complementarity theory.” The first case study centers on proceedings concerning bribes paid by subsidiaries of Siemens AG, a German company, to obtain and retain a contract to provide national identity cards for the Argentine government. The second case study examines events stemming from overbilling in the construction of a courthouse in Brazil. Analysis of these cases suggests that the institutional complementary theory is credible. At the same time, the findings suggest that local institutions have greater potential, and foreign institutions have more limited potential, than the theory assumes.
2021
The article analyzes the development process of a new anti-corruption institutionality in Brazil, based mainly on judicial tools and on the legal system – police officers, prosecutors, and judges – that finds its highest expression during the Operation Car Wash. The hypothesis is that the new anti-corruption institutionality was built in the first term through justice policies coordinated by the Federal government, but was taken over by the Public Prosecution’s Office and the Judiciary. The article highlights the main characteristics of the new anti-corruption institutionality and introduces its historical construction, frame by frame, based on the evolution of task forces in Brazil from the Banestado Case to Operation Car Wash.
Transnational Anti-Corruption Law in Action: Case Studies from Argentina and Brazil
2011
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the "institutional complementarity theory." The first case study centers on proceedings concerning bribes paid by subsidiaries of Siemens AG, a German company, to obtain and retain a contract to provide national identity cards for the Argentine government. The second case study examines events stemming from overbilling in the construction of a courthouse in Brazil. Analysis of these cases suggests that the institutional complementary theory is credible. At the same time, the findings suggest that local institutions have greater potential, and foreign institutions have more limited potential, than the theory assumes.
Building up a convenient accountability: How the 'anti-corruption' law in Brazil was put into force
This paper focuses on how Brazil designed and put into force a legal instrument that makes companies strictly liable for domestic and international acts of corruption and highlights the role of external drivers during a 15-year process. It also introduces the concept of 'convenient accountability' which suggests that Brazil has adopted the slowest and cheapest methods in order to address the demands of those who want and those who do not want greater accountability in the case of the new Clean Company Act (Law 12846/2013); also dubbed as 'anti-corruption law'. Despite the apparent force of the civil society in this case of 'pressure from below', until March 2017, the federal government has only punished four companies with administrative sanctions under the new law – none of them are among those investigated by the corruption probe dubbed 'Car Wash' (Lava Jato in Portuguese). An already overwhelmed anti-corruption agency was chosen to enforce the new legislation in the federal and international spheres against companies, some of them being traditional campaign financers and governmental contractors. Hence, it still remains uncertain whether Brazil will effectively enforce its anti-corruption law that, on paper, even exceeds international requirements.
Brazilian Political Science Review
The success of different categories of legal professionals in building positions of state power in Brazil since the end of the military regime is in line with the legitimation of models of law and international cooperation. This article focuses on the connections between Brazilian legal actors and the international 'fight against corruption'. By looking at the international connections of Brazil's Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), we aim to show how the promotion of anti-corruption models of law is the result of corporate cooperation strategies. We cite as evidence overseas travel by MPF agents and their connections with the international field in recent decades. We start by analyzing cooperation documents and then attempt to trace the MPF's pathway towards internationalization during the 2000s.
Suit up to go to Jail: How the Multi-Institutional Approach Against Corruption can Work in Brazil
Thirty years after democratization, Brazil is still trying to find ways to increase transparency and accountability, with a range of different laws and internal procedures. In this crusade, the country has been tackling corruption through an accountability system built up through institutional multiplicity. Different public agencies in the Federal sphere perform three primary as well as complementary/compensatory checks and balances mechanisms: oversight, investigation and punishment. The Brazilian case suggests that there are more pros than cons in this approach as long as all the mechanisms work properly.
Brazilian Political Science Review, 2020
The success of different categories of legal professionals in building positions of state power in Brazil since the end of the military regime is in line with the legitimation of models of law and international cooperation. This article focuses on the connections between Brazilian legal actors and the international 'fight against corruption'. By looking at the international connections of Brazil's Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF), we aim to show how the promotion of anti-corruption models of law is the result of corporate cooperation strategies. We cite as evidence overseas travel by MPF agents and their connections with the international field in recent decades. We start by analyzing cooperation documents and then attempt to trace the MPF's pathway towards internationalization during the 2000s.
Since the enactment of the new Anti-corruption Law, the interaction between the antitrust and anti-corruption leniency regimes has attracted the attention of policy makers. More recently, the emergence of Operation Car Wash (" operação lava jato "), one of the biggest corruption scandals of all time, has established a need to more closely analyze the criminal leniency regime under the Criminal Organization Law. Following an introduction, section two of this paper summarizes the recent history of the cooperation between different authorities involved in cartel enforcement. Section three further explores the roles and features of the main authorities discussed in this paper. Section four addresses administrative antitrust, administrative anti-corruption, and criminal infringements related to bid rigging practices. Likewise, section five addresses the main administrative antitrust, administrative and judicial anti-corruption, and criminal penalties that can be imposed by administrative and judicial authorities prosecuting a bid rigging practice. Section six addresses the most significant challenges brought by the interface between administrative antitrust, administrative anti-corruption, and criminal legislation: the issues related to the enforcement of the leniency agreements. The conclusion reinforces the importance of the antitrust, anti-corruption, and criminal authorities working together to reach the best practices that could lead to an optimum enforcement of the three leniency regimes.
The Federal Justice act in combating corruption in Southern Brazil
RAP , 2019
Th is article studies the operation of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) in the fi ght against corruption crimes. Judgments produced by the TRF4 criminal courts between 2003 and 2016 underwent text analysis using the dictionary method, seeking to outline the profi le of crimes and defendants. Despite the changes in the web accountability institutions, with the outbreak of major federal police operations, technological uses, new legal devices and a high degree of concentration between the agencies, there is a small proportion of grand corruption crime, involving middle and high-ranking bureaucrats and more sophisticated crimes with greater fi nancial value. Crimes involving contraband and petty corruption take up much of the day to day of the judiciary in the south region of the country, at least in the criminal intermediate courts, where the judge appeals decisions coming from specialized and generalist criminal courts.