Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello is a Brazilian politician who served as the 32nd president of Brazil from 1990 to 1992, when he resigned in a failed attempt to stop his impeachment trial by the Brazilian Senate. Collor was the first president democratically elected after the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship. He became the youngest president in Brazilian history, taking office at the age of 40. After he resigned from the presidency, the impeachment trial on charges of corruption continued. Collor was found guilty by the Senate and disqualified from holding elected office for eight years (1992–2000). He was later acquitted of ordinary criminal charges in his judicial trial before Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, for lack of valid evidence.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician who is the 39th and current president of Brazil since 2023. A member of the Workers' Party, Lula was also the 35th president from 2003 to 2011.
José Dirceu, in full José Dirceu de Oliveira e Silva, is a former Brazilian politician. His political rights were suspended by the Brazilian House of Representatives and he was found guilty by the Brazilian Supreme Court of active corruption and conspiracy in two separate lawsuits.
The Mensalão scandal was a major parliamentary alleged vote-buying scandal by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration that threatened to bring down his government in 2005. Mensalão is a neologism, an augmentative variant of the word for "monthly payment".
Odebrecht S.A., officially known as Novonor, is a Brazilian conglomerate, headquartered in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, consisting of diversified businesses in the fields of engineering, construction, chemicals and petrochemicals. The company was founded in 1944 in Salvador by Norberto Odebrecht, and is active in the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Its leading company is Norberto Odebrecht Construtora.
Amado Boudou is an Argentine economist and politician who served as the Vice President of Argentina from 2011 to 2015. He previously served as Minister of Economy from 2009 to 2011.
Boudougate is a political scandal in Argentina involving Vice President Amado Boudou and the printing house Ciccone Calcográfica. The AFIP, the revenue service of Argentina, requested Ciccone's bankruptcy in July 2010; but the AFIP reversed itself on September 24, 2010, and rescinded the bankruptcy request. A shell corporation named "The Old Fund", represented by Alejandro Vandenbroele, gave 2.3 million pesos to Ciccone; Vandenbroele became president of the organization as a result. Boudou, who was Minister of Economy at the time, instructed the AFIP to give Ciccone an exceptional moratorium to refinance debts. Boudou denied having any relationship with Vandenbroele, or even knowing about him, but it was confirmed later that Vandenbroele paid the rent and the cable television bill for an apartment belonging to Boudou.
Lee Jae-yong is a South Korean business executive who has served as the executive chairman of Samsung Electronics since October 2022. He is the only son of Lee Kun-hee and Hong Ra-hee.
César Guido Forcieri is an Argentine lawyer, economist, politician, and businessman. He is currently the Executive Director for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay at The World Bank.
Alejandro Paul Vandenbroele is an Argentinian-Belgian lawyer and businessman who is a leading figure in the Argentinian financial scandal known both as Boudougate and as “Caso Ciccone,” which happened in February 2012. As president of a Dutch-based firm called The Old Fund, he has been accused of being a front man for Argentinian Vice President Amado Boudou and for Boudou's business partner Núñez Carmona in a purported scheme involving the purchase and control of the printing house Ciccone Calcografica, later known as Compañía de Valores Sudamericana, or CVS, which printed banknotes and documents for the government of Argentina.
José María Nuñez Carmona is an Argentinian businessman and entrepreneur who is a business partner and close friend of Amado Boudou, the Vice President of Argentina. He is one of the principals in the Boudougate scandal, which has been described by the Argentina Independent as “a messy tangle of crossed accusations.” The case involves the printing firm Calcográfica Ciccone, which has done many printing jobs for the Argentinian government, including the printing of money. The firm was bought in September 2010 by The Old Fund, a company run by Núñez Carmona's friend Alejandro Vandenbroele, and it was charged that Vandenbroele was in fact a front for Boudou and Núñez Carmona, with the latter acting as a middleman in the secret acquisition of the printing firm, whose name was changed after the purchase to Compañía de Valores Sudamericana (CVS).
Guillermo Reinwick is an Argentinian businessman who is implicated in the Boudougate scandal, which erupted in 2012.
Operation Car Wash was a landmark anti-corruption probe in Brazil. Beginning in March 2014 as the investigation of a small car wash in Brasília over money laundering, the proceedings uncovered a massive corruption scheme in the Brazilian federal government, particularly in state-owned enterprises. The probe was conducted through a joint task force of agents in the federal police, revenue collection agency, internal audit office and antitrust regulator. Evidence was collected and presented to the court system by a team of federal prosecutors led by Deltan Dallagnol, while the judge in charge of the operation was Sergio Moro. Eventually, other federal prosecutors and judges would go on to oversee related cases under their jurisdictions in various Brazilian states. The operation implicated leading businessmen, federal congressmen, senators, state governors, federal government ministers, and former presidents Collor, Temer and Lula. Companies and individuals accused of involvement have agreed to pay 25 billion reais in fines and restitution of embezzled public funds.
In 2015 and 2016, a series of protests in Brazil denounced corruption and the government of President Dilma Rousseff, triggered by revelations that numerous politicians allegedly accepted bribes connected to contracts at state-owned energy company Petrobras between 2003 and 2010 and connected to the Workers' Party, while Rousseff chaired the company's board of directors. The first protests on 15 March 2015 numbered between one and nearly three million protesters against the scandal and the country's poor economic situation. In response, the government introduced anti-corruption legislation. A second day of major protesting occurred 12 April, with turnout, according to GloboNews, ranging from 696,000 to 1,500,000. On 16 August, protests took place in 200 cities in all 26 states of Brazil. Following allegations that Rousseff's predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, participated in money laundering and a prosecutor ordered his arrest, record numbers of Brazilians protested against the Rousseff government on 13 March 2016, with nearly 7 million citizens demonstrating.
Marcelo Bahia Odebrecht is a Brazilian businessman and the former CEO of Odebrecht, a diversified Brazilian Conglomerate. In March 2016, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for paying more than $30 million in bribes. The jail sentence was reduced to ten years in prison in December 2016 for paying a fine, admitting guilt and providing evidence to authorities.
The 2016 South Korean political scandal, often called Park Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil Gate in South Korea, was a scandal that emerged around October 2016 in relation to the unusual access that Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of shaman-esque cult leader Choi Tae-min, had to President Park Geun-hye of South Korea.
Events in the year 2017 in Brazil.
The 2020 trial in France for the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy dealt with allegations that he bribed a judge with a retirement package in return for information on an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations due to payments he is said to have received from heiress Liliane Bettencourt. The trial opened on 24 November 2020. Prosecutors asked for a four-year jail sentence for Sarkozy, the implicated judge, and Sarkozy's lawyer Thierry Herzog. On 4 December 2020, Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese businessman who allegedly helped finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential election campaign with help from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was detained in Lebanon, although he was allowed a conditional prison release a few days later after agreeing to abide by a travel ban. The defendants denied the accusations. The trial concluded on 10 December; the verdict was rendered on 1 March 2021. Sarkozy, Azibert, and Herzog were found guilty and sentenced to three years in jail for corruption. Two years of this sentence are suspended, and one to be served in prison. Sarkozy appealed, suspending the ruling. On 17 May 2023, Sarkoxy, as well as his co-defendants, was convicted on appeal and given a three-year sentence; they appealed to the Court of Cassation.
The Odebrecht case is one of the largest corruption cases documented in recent Latin American history, spanning more than 30 years. It is based on an investigation by the United States Department of Justice, along with 10 other Latin American countries, into the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. This investigation details how Odebrecht would have made bribes to presidents, former presidents and government officials of 12 countries: Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, United States, Guatemala, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, during the last 20 years, in order to obtain benefits in public contracting.
