Bolsonaro accused of creating Brazil’s “largest institutionalized corruption scheme”

In 2022, Brazil rose two places in the Corruption Perceptions Index, according to a report by Transparency International, which accuses former president Jair Bolsonaro of having created “the largest institutionalized corruption scheme” ever.

In this year’s edition of Corruption Perception Index (IPC), prepared by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Transparency International, Brazil reached the same 38 points, on a scale ranging from zero to 100, that it had obtained in 2021.

According to that NGO, Jair Bolsonaro’s term (2019-2023) “was marked by the dismantling of anti-corruption structures that took dozens of years to build”.

Transparency International considers that the Bolsonaro government “created the largest institutionalized corruption scheme ever known in Brazil, known as the ‘hidden budget'”.

“With this scheme, billions of reais served to favor political allies, with serious impacts on health, education and infrastructure policies”, he highlights.

According to the report, “the combination of corruption, authoritarianism and economic downturn” proved to be “especially volatile” in the country.

Considered as a country to watch in 2023, Transparency International points out that the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Workers’ Party “have not yet presented a concrete plan to combat corruption for the future, nor defined how they will restore autonomy of key institutions, such as the Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Police and environmental agencies”.

Brazil’s trend over the last five years has translated into a three point rise, but considering the last 10 years, it has lost five.

The IPC was created by Transparency International in 1995 and since then has been a reference in the analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, based on the perception of experts and business executives on the levels of corruption in the public sector.

It is a composite index, that is, it results from the combination of corruption analysis sources developed by other independent organizations, and ranks 180 countries and territories from zero (perceived as very corrupt) to 100 points (very transparent).

In 2012, the organization revised the methodology used to build the index to allow comparison of scores from one year to the next.