Lava-jato operation

(L–R, top to bottom:) Headquarters of Petrobras in Rio de Janeiro; Emblem of the Federal Police of Brazil; Judge Sérgio Moro; Deltan Dallagnol with Rodrigo Janot; Federal Police in an operation; Odebrecht logo

Operation Car Wash (Portuguese: Operação Lava Jato) is an ongoing criminal investigation being carried out by the Federal Police of Brazil, Curitiba Branch, and judicially commanded by Judge Sérgio Moro since March 17, 2014.

Initially a money laundering investigation, it has expanded to cover allegations of corruption at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras, where executives allegedly accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to construction firms at inflated prices. This criminal "system" is known as "Petrolão—Operation Car Wash". The operation has included more than one thousand warrants for search and seizure, temporary and preventive detention and coercive measures, with the aim of ascertaining the extent of a money laundering scheme suspected of moving more than R$30 billion (c. US$9.5 billion as of July 23, 2017). Because of the exceptionality of their actions, some lawyers accuse the operation of "selectivity" and "partiality" in their case, being "a criminal case that violated minimum rules of defense for a large number of defendants".

Operation Car Wash began as a money laundering investigation and became the biggest corruption scandal in Latin America. The name was chosen because the alleged ring used a currency exchange and money transfer service at the Posto da Torre (Tower's Gas Station) in Brasília to move illicit payments.

At least eleven other countries, mostly in Latin America, were involved and the Brazilian company Odebrecht was deeply implicated.

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