July 5, 2019, The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/lula-moro-brazil.html
Contributing Opinion Writer
Brazil’s Operation Car Wash was supposed to overthrow the country’s
culture of graft. Instead, it’s brought corruption into the heart of the state.
São Paulo, Brazil — On the surface, “Operation Car Wash” has been a
virtuous crusade against political corruption in this country.
Over the last five years, this federal investigation has uncovered vast
kickback schemes involving Brazil’s most important executives and politicians.
The operation has led to the criminal prosecution of 429 individuals and the
conviction of 159 of them. News outlets have eagerly covered each step of the
investigation, pushing for and praising the overthrow of a culture of graft in
Brazilian politics. The investigation should, in theory, be a source of pride
for our young democracy — only this is not the whole story.
From the beginning, Operation Car Wash resorted to questionable
procedures, such as using pretrial detentions to force confessions and relying
too heavily on generous plea-bargain deals. But these didn’t seem enough to
dismiss its efforts against wide-scale corruption, at least in the public’s
eye.
Then, on June 9, the news site The Intercept Brasil published the first
in a series of reports casting doubts on the integrity of the main actors
within the investigation. The journalists obtained,
