Sérgio Moro: For Leading the Fight against Brazil's Corrupt Leaders
Sérgio Moro: For Leading the Fight against Brazil's Corrupt Leaders
"The constant flow of scandals seems to be souring Brazilians on their political system altogether. But Moro prefers taking the long view," writes AS/COA's Brian Winter in Foreign Policy's globalREthinkers edition.
During his pursuit of Brazil’s largest-ever corruption case, federal judge Sérgio Moro has sought inspiration in an unlikely figure: Theodore Roosevelt.
“There can be no crime more serious than bribery,” the 26th U.S. president declared in a 1903 speech to Congress. Bribe-givers, Roosevelt charged, are “as wicked as the murderer, for the murderer may only take one life against the law.”
A video of Moro reading Roosevelt’s speech aloud in Portuguese in October 2016 has been viewed more than 2 million times on Facebook. That’s testimony to his enduring celebrity as the judge overseeing the prosecution of the “Car Wash” corruption scandal, which involved more than $5 billion in bribes at Brazil’s state-run oil company and elsewhere, landed dozens of tycoons and politicians in jail, and contributed to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. (“Car Wash” refers to a gas station where investigators first detected money laundering, setting the case in motion.)
But the video also highlights how the 45-year-old Moro, in 2017, has made “Car Wash” a central part of his quest to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, similar to what Roosevelt undertook against American “robber barons” and bribe-givers a century ago.
“We are living in an era of a certain disappointment with democracy. It is our duty to not only defend democracy but also work to improve it,” Moro says. “Corruption undermines confidence. Roosevelt understood this … and that’s a spirit we need to replicate today in our civil society and government and not just in Brazil….”
