Attorney General levels criminal charges against leader, but Congress must vote to approve a trial
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Attorney General Rodrigo Janot brought charges of corruption against Mr. Temer, alleging the leader took about $150,000 in bribes from the former chairman of meatpacking giant JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker.
According to former JBS Chairman Joesley Batista, Mr. Temer led a group of politicians that acted as a criminal syndicate, charging bribes in exchange for financing from state banks and favorable regulatory actions.
“The spurious practices aimed at serving private interests with voluminous public resources aren’t restricted to those reported in the charges hereby presented,” Mr. Janot wrote in his indictment, saying Mr. Temer “swindled” Brazil’s citizens. “The criminal organization didn’t just operate in the recent past but remains in full activity today.”
A representative for Mr. Temer declined to comment. Mr. Temer has previously denied any wrongdoing and has said he wouldn’t step down from the presidency.
Two-thirds of Congress must vote to allow the case against Mr. Temer to go to a trial, which would occur before the country’s Supreme Court. That sets the stage for a high-stakes showdown between Brazil’s crusading law-enforcement apparatus and an entrenched political class at a time of growing tension between the two sides.
Launched in 2014, the so-called Operation Car Wash has expanded from a narrow money-laundering probe into Brazil’s most significant anticorruption push ever. In a country where the rich and powerful historically faced few consequences for wrongdoing, the investigation has led to the jailing of scores of high-profile businessmen and politicians, yielded more than $7 billion in settlements and stirred broad hopes for a fairer society.
But it hasn’t magically given Brazilians a new roster of honest politicians, something even the most optimistic political scientists say would take years. Instead, the investigations have fueled a state of nearly constant political turmoil, contributing to Brazil’s deepest economic downturn in more than a century and leading to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016.
“So far, the confrontation of systemic corruption has basically been the work of law enforcement: police, prosecutors and judges, with strong support from civil society and public opinion,” Sergio Moro, the judge spearheading Car Wash who is widely seen as a national hero, told The Wall Street Journal. “It needs to become part of the political agenda.”
But with a second president in little more than a year teetering, some Brazilians are beginning to wonder if the costs of cleaning up corruption outweigh the benefits. Brazil’s per capita economic output has contracted by some 11% since Car Wash began, forcing millions of layoffs.
The instability has been compounded by growing evidence of corruption’s omnipresence in Brazilian politics.
In a videotaped testimony he gave as part of a plea deal earlier this year, Marcelo Odebrecht, the former chief executive of Latin America’s largest construction company, said he was unaware of any politician managing to get elected without illegal cash. Undeclared contributions, he estimated, account for some three-fourths of all campaign money.
“Even if the guy says he didn’t know, he still received money from his party that was [illegal],” Mr. Odebrecht testified.
But with a budget deficit in excess of 9% of gross domestic product, Brazil desperately needs to pass sweeping reforms to avert a potential debt crisis, economists say. Mr. Temer, who is deeply unpopular with ordinary Brazilians but enjoys cozy relations with much of Congress, was seen a capable negotiator until the latest scandal erupted.
Brazilian Prosecutor-General Rodrigo Janot at a seminar on combating corruption in Brasília on June 19.
Photo:
Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
Brazil’s electoral court, known as the TSE, this month acquitted Mr. Temer on charges of receiving illicit campaign funds in the 2014 election, a case that could have forced him from office. To reach its ruling, the court tossed out evidence from Car Wash showing that the campaign had taken clandestine money from Mr. Odebrecht’s firm.
“You can’t replace a president every hour, even if you want to,” TSE President Gilmar Mendes said as he cast the tiebreaking vote to absolve Mr. Temer.
That decision was roundly criticized. “TSE Ignores Proof,” blared a headline in Rio’s O Globo newspaper. Activists placed funeral wreaths outside the TSE’s building in Brasília.
But tellingly, street protests on the scale of those that shook Brazil in 2013 and 2016 didn’t materialize. Nor were there major demonstrations following last month’s release of a taped conversation in which Mr. Batista told Mr. Temer of his efforts to obstruct investigations into JBS and its parent company.
Prosecutors worry the public’s apparent fatigue is giving politicians the cover they need to undermine Car Wash.
“Without the support of the population, Car Wash wouldn’t have happened, and without the support of the population it will die sooner than it should,” said Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, a prosecutor on the original task force, in an interview.
Mr. Lima, like many here, sees law enforcement as only part of the solution to Brazil’s corruption problem. He says Congress should also seek to reduce the number of parties—currently around 35—to make politics less transactional. An electoral system that awards congressional seats to parties rather than individual candidates makes it possible for unpopular legislators to remain in office. Elected officials and cabinet members also enjoy special legal protections, such as a rule that they can only be tried in the Supreme Court for criminal offenses.
Instead of making its members more accountable to voters, Congress is working on a bill that would expose law-enforcement officials to lawsuits for “abuse of authority.” Legislators have been talking openly of giving themselves amnesty for undeclared campaign cash. Mr. Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, is working behind the scenes to influence the choice of a new attorney general to succeed Mr. Janot when his term ends in September, according to one of the party’s senators.
“We will vote the necessary reforms and purge the dictatorship of the prosecutors,” said Darcísio Perondi, a PMDB congressman and staunch ally of the president. “Temer is indispensable.”
The stakes have risen since Mr. Batista’s bombshell testimony shattered many politicians’ complacent belief that Ms. Rousseff’s government was a “sacrificial lamb to prosecutors” rather than a milestone in a probe seeking even deeper political change, said Chris Garman, a political analyst at Eurasia Group.
“They are seeing investigations as reaching a politically dangerous tipping point,” Mr. Garman said, noting that PMDB politicians have been openly trying to discredit Car Wash in recent weeks.
Against that backdrop, some analysts say Mr. Janot is unlikely to secure the Supreme Court votes necessary to indict the president, who is cozy with much of the political class.
But Mr. Temer’s dismal popularity—7% of Brazilians approve of his government, according to a poll released Saturday by Datafolha—sets limits on how far legislators are willing to stick their necks out for him.
“A lot of deputies are very nervous about their reelection possibilities,” said David Fleischer, a political-science professor at the University of Brasília.
—Luciana Magalhaes contributed to this article.
Write to Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com and Paulo Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.comAppeared in the June 27, 2017, print edition as 'Brazil’s Leader Charged With Corruption. - THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
