Politics of corruption: Brazil and Peru

In Brazil, there are clear examples of law being used as a tool for targeting political opponents – especially towards the Partido dos Trabalhadores (The Workers’ Party). Most recently, newly surfaced documents suggest that judge Sergio Moro may have been partial in his judicial decisions in the Lava Jato case (‘Operation Car Wash’) which may have influenced the the outcome for Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party in the 2018 elections.

In Peru however, the situation is different: there the anti-corruption discourse was used to attack not one particular political party or one particular president, but a wide range of politicians, including former presidents Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Ollanta Humala. While the sitting majority in the Peruvian Congress prepared a report on the Lava Jato case which left out several names, the Attorney’s Office ignored this report and opened investigations against politicians from the different political movements. The current political crisis is partly a result of this fight against corruption.

Professor

Florian Hoffmann
is from the Law Department of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He is also an associate researcher at the Human Rights Center. His work has focused on the interface between law and politics, with his main research interest in international law and human rights. He has published, inter alia, on the UN and human rights, economic and social rights and international legal theory, and is, with Anne Orford, the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on the Theory of International Law.

Camila Gianella
from Peru, is a Global Fellow at LawTransform and a researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI). Dr. Gianella is a part of several projects tied to LawTransform; Abortion Rights lawfare in Latin America, Operationalizing a Rights-Based Approach to Health Service Delivery, Political determinants of sexual and reproductive health: Criminalization health impacts and game changers and Litigating the Right to Health.

The seminar will be moderated by

Bheki Dlamini
. He is a co-pilot for the Democracy and Law research unit. He is a political activist from Swaziland and completed his master’s degree in Public Administration at the University of Bergen in 2017.

This seminar is a part of the Researching Backlash Against Democracy (Breaking BAD) Project at LawTransform.

Coffee, tea and croissants will be served.