Operation Car Wash

Operation Car Wash (Portuguese: Operação Lava Jato) is an 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 . The operation has included more than a hundred warrants for search and seizure, temporary and preventive detention and coercive measures, with the aim of ascertaining a money laundering scheme suspected of moving more than R$30 billion (approx. US$8.94bn as of November 22, 2016). Because of the exceptionality of their actions, 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".

On January 19, 2017, a small plane carrying Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki crashed into the sea near the tourist town of Paraty in the state of Rio de Janeiro, killing the magistrate and four other people. Zavascki had been handling the politically-charged Operation Car Wash corruption trials.

The operation got its name because the alleged ring used a currency exchange and money transfer service at the Posto da Torre (Tower Gas Station) in Brasília to move the money acquired by illicit means. The initial accusation came from businessman Hermes Magnus in 2008, who reported an attempt to launder money through his company, Dunel Indústria e Comércio, a manufacturer of electronic components. Investigations followed, which culminated in the identification of four large criminal rings, headed by Carlos Habib Chater (), Alberto Youssef, Nelma Kodama () and Raul Henrique Srour ().

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