Editor's Note: Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa wrote the following commentary on Brazilian corruption and the role Judge Sérgio Moro played in combating it. Moro, recipient of the Notre Dame Award, will speak at the University’s Commencement ceremony, where he will also be awarded an honorary degree. The following commentary first appeared in Brazilian newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo on Monday, April 16.
There are many admirable people in Brazil, but if I had to choose one of them as an exemplar to show the rest of the world, I would choose Sérgio Moro in a heartbeat.
The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is going to prison in Curitiba to begin his 12-year sentence for corruption, provoking protests organized by the Workers’ Party and homages paid by governments of not-especially-democratic Latin-American countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. This was not entirely unforeseen, but what is more surprising is the way that so many honest people — socialists, social democrats, even libertarians — believe the former president, who fought so ardently against poverty and lifted around 30 million Brazilians out of extreme poverty during his tenure, has been unfairly treated.
Those who see this as the case are convinced, it appears, that governing well depends solely on implementing advanced social policies, irrespective of abiding by the law and acting with integrity. Lula was not sent to jail for the good he did during his government but for the bad. His transgressions include a frightening level of corruption in the state-run company Petrobras and its contractors, which cost the Brazilian taxpayer no less than three billion dollars, two billion of which were in bribes.
Moreover, those who esteem Lula so highly forget that he was once known as an unpleasant gossiper, acting as an emissary and accomplice in many operations run by Odebrecht — in Peru, amongst other countries — offering million-dollar bribes to lead presidents and ministers into signing multimillion-dollar public contracts over to the transnational company.
It is due to this and a number of other incidents that Lula is facing not just one but six ongoing alleged cases of corruption. Dozens of his government cronies, like João Vaccari and José Dirceu, his cabinet chief, have been sentenced to long stretches in jail for theft, fraud and other criminal operations. The accusation of receiving a three-story apartment on the Guarujá beachfront in the state of São Paulo from the construction company OAS is one of the more recent allegations brought against Lula.
Those protesting his imprisonment fail to remember that hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, civil servants and bankers have already been put behind bars, are being investigated or are being tried since the wave of popular anti-corruption sentiment engulfed all of Brazil. This is in large part due to the courage of judges and prosecutors led by Sérgio Moro, the federal judge in Curitiba. More than 180 have already been incarcerated and dozens are due to join them shortly.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of Latin America: a popular uprising with support from all sections of society.”
Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of Latin America: a popular uprising with support from all sections of society. The movement started in São Paulo and has spread across the country, not against a company or a dictator-general but against dishonesty, wrongdoings, thefts, bribes and huge corruption infecting institutions, business, industry and political practice. A popular movement that was not aimed at bringing about socialist revolution or toppling a government but at regenerating democracy. Its objective was to revive the word of law and ensure that it was properly applied to all, be they rich or poor, powerful or ordinary.
It is extraordinary that this pluralist movement has found judges and prosecutors like Sérgio Moro — who are encouraged by the show of popular support — to give it the legal channel through which to investigate, denounce and imprison a number of executives, businesspeople, industrial magnates, ministers, civil servants, men and women from across the scope of society. They have shown that is it viable, that any country is capable of doing so, that decency and honesty can also be achieved in the third world if there is the desire and popular support to do so. I always go back to Sérgio Moro, but he is not alone. Over the past few years, his example has been followed by countless judges and prosecutors who have dared to confront those considered untouchable, bringing them before the law, bit by bit giving the Brazilian people back what had been lost: freedom and faith in justice.
There are many admirable people in Brazil: great writers like Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa or my dear friend Nélida Piñon; politicians like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who saved the Brazilian economy from the brink of disaster during his presidency and set a model for democratic government without ever being accused of any unlawful act; athletes and sportspeople who are household names across the world. Yet if I had to choose an exemplar from amongst them to show the rest of the world, I would chose Sérgio Moro. He is a humble lawyer from Paraná who entered the judiciary on merit in 1996 after graduating. As he has mentions himself, the famous Operation Clean Hands that took place in Italy in the ’90s gave him the ideas and enthusiasm to fight corruption in his own country. He would use strategies similar to those used by the Italian judges, namely preventative detention, witness immunity and collaboration with the press in exchange for reduced sentences. Of course, they tried to corrupt him, and it is surely a miracle that in a country where political assassinations are sadly not uncommon, he is still standing. But there he is, part of a silent revolution (though nobody would dare call it as such). It is a return to justice, to the rule of law, in a society that was disintegrated by widespread corruption, constantly preventing the eternal “the great country of the future” from being the great country of today.
“Corruption is the great adversary of Latin-American progress. It ruins governments on the right and the left, and a great number of Latin-Americans have concluded that it is inevitable, an unstoppable natural phenomenon like earthquakes, storms or lightning.”
Corruption is the great adversary of Latin-American progress. It ruins governments on the right and the left, and a great number of Latin-Americans have concluded that it is inevitable, an unstoppable natural phenomenon like earthquakes, storms or lightning. Yet the truth is that it is possible — and Brazil is demonstrating as much — to fight it if there are audacious and responsible judges and prosecutors supported, of course, by public opinion and the press.
Hence, it is good for Latin America that people like Marcelo Odebrecht and Lula da Silva have been put behind bars after being properly tried and having exhausted all the rights of defense afforded to them by a democratic country. It’s very important to show in practical terms that the judicial process is the same for everyone, no different for the poor devils who make up the majority as it is for the rich and powerful who owe their position to wealth or status. It is precisely those in this latter group who bear the greatest moral obligation to obey the law and show in their day-to-day life these transgressions are not part and parcel of the positions of power and prestige that they have reached, that it can be done within the bounds of the law. That is the only way a community can have faith in its institutions, reject apocalyptic and utopian fantasies, uphold democracy and foment a feeling that the laws exist to protect the society and humanize more and more by the day.
