The money trail

Where money, politics and scandal meet in Brazil, there is usually a camera somewhere nearby to take the pictures that will make any later profession of innocence ring hollow. Roseana Sarney’s presidential bid was killed in 2002 when images of half a million dollars in banknotes found at her husband’s office were broadcast on television. But the scandal that has been rumbling on since the end of November in Brasília has bested all previous efforts in this genre.

The secretary of José Roberto Arruda, the governor of the Federal District, was filmed handing over bundles of cash to his boss’s various allies. They stuffed it down trousers, into handbags and, when other pockets were full, into socks. But this film has a surprising ending. On February 11th Mr Arruda was placed in police custody, to await trial for coercing a witness and attempting to destroy evidence. (His deputy governor has resigned over the affair, leaving the capital leaderless.) This is unusual in a country where politicians accused of corruption often lose nothing more precious than their mandates or their dignity—and even then they seem to bounce back quickly.

Fernando Collor, president from 1990 to 1992, resigned to avoid impeachment for corruption but is now back in the senate. Nobody went to prison for the mensalão, a vote-buying scandal that nearly destroyed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government in 2005 and which also featured money in unusual places (a party hack was arrested at an airport with $100,000 in his underwear and more cash in his luggage).

Ms Sarney is now a state governor. Her father, José Sarney, a former president, is clinging to his job as the senate’s leader, despite claims of maladministration. His predecessor, Renan Calheiros, remains in the senate, despite corruption claims. In their case, nothing has been proven.

Brazil is probably no more corrupt than other countries of similar size and wealth. It came out better than China and India and a long way ahead of Russia in the latest index of perceptions of corruption compiled by Transparency International, a German NGO. Brazil is blessed with competitive and aggressive media and tenacious institutions that investigate such scandals, revolving around the public-prosecutor’s office, a semi-autonomous part of the federal government and its local equivalents. This scrutiny has a price: the government thinks that another watchdog, the audit tribunal, is holding up spending on infrastructure unnecessarily.

In Mr Arruda’s case it was a public prosecutor who collected the damning evidence. In exchange for more lenient sentencing Duval Barbosa, an aide to Mr Arruda, allowed himself to star in 30 videos in which he handed over cash to allies in the state legislature. The money, as is usual in such scandals, is alleged to have come from companies that had contracts to provide services to the government of the Federal District. Mr Arruda’s team claimed that the money was to buy panettones for Christmas, or comprised legal campaign donations.

Transparência, a Brazilian NGO, reckons that although some of the money uncovered in such scandals involves bribes, much of it goes towards funding election campaigns. Brazil has strict campaign-finance laws. Gilberto Kassab, the mayor of São Paulo, is under investigation for receiving a disallowed donation during his latest campaign. He denies any wrongdoing. He was suspended and then temporarily reinstated pending the outcome of the investigation. Last year several state governors had their mandates ended for similar misdemeanours.

Campaigns are particularly expensive in a country where the electoral districts encompass an entire state or city. As in the United States, the sheer size and reach of government in Brazil mean that plenty of businesses feel that they have to remain on good terms with a wide range of politicians of all stripes by providing campaign donations.

Gilmar Mendes, the president of the Supreme Court, said this week that the prosecution of Mr Arruda showed that Brazil is making progress in the fight against political corruption. That may be optimistic. A more gloomy view would be that Mr Arruda was the governor of a small state and a representative of a party, the conservative Democrats, that is of declining importance. And his alleged skulduggery went on under the noses of the public-prosecutor’s office. A more practical lesson from the episode to aspiring politicians might be to check all pot plants, bags and office furniture for hidden cameras before dealing in large bundles of used banknotes.