Lulas in Jail. Guess Whos Still Free?

BY BRIAN WINTER | APRIL 12, 2018
Car Wash and similar corruption probes need to show the law applies to everyone.



If you want to understand why the Car Wash corruption investigation is at a crossroads, not just in Brazil but throughout Latin America, consider the following:

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Collor, of course, was Brazil’s leader from 1990 to 1992, when he was impeached amid a truly epic corruption scandal involving a private jet known as the “Black Bat,” a house with eight artificial waterfalls and perhaps the ultimate betrayal – the accusations came from his own brother. Collor denied it all, laid low for a while and then began a comeback. Elected to the Senate in 2006, Collor has reinvented himself as a refined, multilingual man of the world, even becoming head of the Foreign Relations Committee last year. In January, he declared his intention to return to Brazil’s highest office, telling a crowd that “what’s important now is to look forward,” a phrase that in his case presumably had more than one meaning.

Collor is currently polling at about 2 percent, and has exactly zero chance of returning to the Palácio da Alvorada this October. But that’s not the point. For many Brazilians, he is emblematic of everything that is wrong with their country’s politics and unfair about its current corruption purge. Indeed, there is no evidence that Collor, now age 68, has changed his ways. Federal police seized a Ferrari, a Porsche and a Lamborghini (!!) from Collor’s house in 2015, and he was indicted for corruption and money laundering as part of the sprawling Car Wash case last August. As ever, he has denied wrongdoing. But because of the special legal protection known as foro privilegiado that thousands of political office holders in Brazil enjoy, Collor remains free, and may not face trial for several more years, if at all.

Disgust over impunity has been building for years. But it takes on new meaning in the wake of Saturday’s arrest and imprisonment of Lula, who also wants to be president again – and unlike Collor, would almost certainly win if allowed to run. The race is now on to show that justice truly applies to everyone, not just in Brazil, but elsewhere in the region. Otherwise, the whole anti-corruption movement is at risk of losing momentum, if not collapsing entirely.

More:
http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/lulas-jail-guess-whos-still-free