"Corruption and the Lava Jato Scandal in Latin America brings together key international and interdisciplinary perspectives to shine new light on Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, Latin America's largest corruption scandal to date. Since 2014, this scandal has unfolded in surprising ways to expose collusion between construction companies and state officials in Brazil and 11 other countries. The corruption uncovered amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and billions of dollars in stolen state funds. The volume features evidence that the main construction company at the center of the scandal was apparently deliberate about seeking business in corrupt markets. It also evaluates the ambiguous role played by the media, whose members often relied uncritically on classified information released by the authorities. The volume further contributes to our understanding with studies on a number of other relevant topics, including: the overlap between corruption and the planning of the Rio Olympics; Mexico and Peru's contrasting responses to Lava Jato; the policy reforms needed to avoid a similar scandal in the future; and the roadmap for how Lava Jato should end. Across fifteen chapters by leading and emerging scholars and practitioners, this book engages with these issues from a balanced and unbiased perspective, including interviews with key stakeholders on both sides of the case. As one of the first book-length studies to deal with Lava Jato in the English language, this ground-breaking volume is a compelling reading for advanced students and researchers in areas including Corruption Studies, Public Ethics, Political Science and Latin American Studies, as well as for practitioners working to make governments more accountable"--

This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor’s introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and provides an over-arching view of corrupt practices and anti-corruption initiatives throughout Latin America. Corruption in Latin America shows the extent to which corrupt practices engulf each of the countries discussed, the involvement of political and corporate entities in the pursuit of ill-gotten gains, and the drag on development caused by corruption in each political entity. The book will be of interest for social scientists, political actors and social activists involved in the fight against corruption in Latin America by providing in-depth analyses of the topic and discussing how best to pursue anti-corruption efforts through civil society actions, judicial endeavors, legal shifts, or elections.

Corruption and the Lava Jato Scandal in Latin America brings together key international and interdisciplinary perspectives to shine new light on Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, Latin America’s largest corruption scandal to date. Since 2014, this scandal has unfolded in surprising ways to expose collusion between construction companies and state officials in Brazil and 11 other countries. The corruption uncovered amounts in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and billions of dollars in stolen state funds. The volume features evidence that the main construction company at the center of the scandal was—apparently—deliberate about seeking business in corrupt markets. It also evaluates the ambiguous role played by the media, whose members often relied uncritically on classified information released by the authorities. The volume further contributes to our understanding with studies on a number of other relevant topics, including: the overlap between corruption and the planning of the Rio Olympics; Mexico and Peru’s contrasting responses to Lava Jato; the policy reforms needed to avoid a similar scandal in the future; and the roadmap for how Lava Jato should end. Across 15 chapters by leading and emerging scholars and practitioners, this book engages with these issues from a balanced and unbiased perspective, including interviews with key stakeholders on both sides of the case. As one of the first book-length studies to deal with Lava Jato in the English language, this ground-breaking volume is a compelling reading for advanced students and researchers in areas including Corruption Studies, Public Ethics, Political Science, and Latin American Studies, as well as for practitioners working to make governments more accountable.

Analyzing the political consequences of the most extensive corruption investigation in recent Latin American history, Operação Lava-Jato, Media Leaks and Corruption in Brazil answers two central questions about the contradictory effects news media has on political systems. First, how can political actors in a seemingly well-functioning democracy quickly override checks and balances, and replace a head of state with a corrupt vice-president? Second, how can very active news media, while ostensibly performing the role of the watchdog, still fail to deliver media accountability to the public? Combining a quantitative view of the media sphere with case studies of the leaks, legal actions, and alliances forming and breaking in the Brazilian Congress, Mads Bjelke Damgaard demonstrates that the media's attention to leaks and investigations of corruption paved the way for Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. By timing the disclosure of information in scandals, actors with inside information were able to drive the media agenda and let some scandals escape from the limelight. The book delivers an in-depth study of how scandals become political weapons in a time of media personalities and post-politics. This book will interest scholars of Latin American Studies, and Brazil, and the broader fields of media studies, democracy studies, and journalism studies.

A Financial Times Book to Read in 2022 Operation Car Wash is the inside story of two Brazilian Federal Police officers who found themselves at the centre of the biggest corruption scandal in history; uncovering a web of political and corporate racketeering which would lead them all the way to the arrest and imprisonment of the nation's President. Through engrossing first-hand testimony, Pontes and Anselmo recount the uphill battle faced by the Federal Police in apprehending Brazil's white-collar criminals, in a country where the war on drugs has become a convenient distraction for the politicians and businessmen extracting billions of dollars from the public purse. A historical record that reads like a political police thriller, Operation Car Wash is also a warning to the world: demonstrating how easily institutionalized crime can take root in a nation, and how difficult it can be to eradicate.

Many anti-corruption efforts have had only a minimal effect on curbing the problem of corruption. This book explains why that is, and shows readers what works in the real world in the fight against corruption, and why. Counter-corruption initiatives often focus on the legal, institutional, and contextual factors that facilitate corrupt behavior, but these have had only nominal impacts, because most of these reforms can be circumvented by government officials, powerful citizens, and business people who are relentless in their quest for self-interest. This book argues that instead, we should target the key individual and group drivers of corrupt behavior and, through them, promote sustainable behavioral change. Drawing on over 25 years of practical experience planning, designing, and implementing anti-corruption programs in over 40 countries, as well as a wealth of insights from social psychological, ethical, and negotiation research, this book identifies innovative tools that target these core human motivators of corruption, with descriptions of pilot tests that show how they can work in practice. Anti-corruption is again becoming a priority issue, prompted by the emergence of more authoritarian regimes, and the public scrutiny of government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Straddling theory and practice, this book is the perfect guide to what works and what doesn’t, and will be valuable for policymakers, NGOs, development practitioners, and corruption studies students and researchers.