What China Can Teach Latin America About Good and Bad Graft
Corruption, while far from ideal, can be consistent with, and even contribute to, fast economic growth.
Odebrecht at work in Venezuela, which received the second largest amount of bribes.
Photographer: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images
The disenchantment with political systems sweeping across Latin America has manifold causes. There’s narco-trafficking and the attendant resurgence of violence. There’s entrenched inequality, downplayed by elites as an unfortunate yet tolerable byproduct of globalization. And there is also a Brazilian construction company: Odebrecht.
From 2001 to 2016, the contractor paid more than $700 million in bribes to win public contracts (and often renegotiate them at higher prices) in ten Latin Americas countries. Some 600 politicians and officials were implicated, including four former presidents of Peru, two of Panama and former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. And the scandal ultimately took down Brazil's current president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who spent 19 months in prison for receiving bribes from a rival construction firm until his convictions were nullified on procedural grounds.