Operation Car Wash beyond Borders: The Making of a Transnational Policing Field

Operação Lava Jato além das fronteiras: A criação de um campo policial transnacional

Abstract

Investigations by the press have revealed that Operation Car Wash, an anti-corruption task force, received support from the FBI, the American federal agency of criminal investigation. This paper analyses the transnational connections between Brazilian and American law enforcement officers, which led to the formulation and conduction of Operation Car Wash, reconstituting its transnational dimensions, which have yet to receive much attention in the specialised literature. To accomplish this, we have mobilised the field thinking tool developed by Pierre Bourdieu and his interpreters in International Relations, enabling us to reflect on the interactions between police within a specialised social space promoter of socialisation, competition, and cooperation. Beginning with documental research, we have identified the national and international actors involved in the operation, the power relationships between them, their patterns and spaces of interaction, and potential political impacts.

Keywords
Car Wash; transnational policing; field analysis; FBI; Federal Police

Resumo

Investigações da imprensa revelaram que a Operação Lava Jato, uma força-tarefa anticorrupção, recebeu apoio do FBI, a agência federal americana de investigação criminal. Este artigo analisa as conexões transnacionais entre agentes da lei brasileiros e americanos que levaram à formulação e à condução da Operação Lava Jato, reconstituindo suas dimensões transnacionais, que ainda não receberam muita atenção na literatura especializada. Para isso, mobilizamos a ferramenta de pensamento de campo desenvolvida por Pierre Bourdieu e seus intérpretes nas Relações Internacionais, o que nos permitiu refletir sobre as interações entre policiais em um espaço social especializado, promotor de socialização, competição e cooperação. Começando com a pesquisa documental, identificamos os atores nacionais e internacionais envolvidos na operação, as relações de poder entre eles, seus padrões e espaços de interação e os possíveis impactos políticos.

Palavras-chave
Lava Jato; policiamento transnacional; análise de campo; FBI; Polícia Federal

Introduction

Evidence collected by the press has revealed that Operation Car Wash, a group of anti-corruption investigations led by Federal Prosecutors and the Federal Police from 2014 to 2021, received support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the American federal police. The operation had a significant impact on Brazilian politics. It even undermined the government, leading to the impeachment of then-President Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the issuing of hundreds of prison warrants which produced a political and economic crisis that continues to this day (Avritzer 2019).

Even though ample literature has covered this subject in general, little attention has been devoted to its international dimensions (for example, Lagunes and Svejna 2020; Pimenta and Greene 2020). In this work, we have identified that the formulation and the conduction of this operation were accomplished with the cooperation of foreign police forces, especially from the United States. Based on this diagnosis, we have analysed how articulation took place in a transnational field of police cooperation, which provided a social space of interaction between these agents, reflecting the power relationships and interests involved in this process. Based on this, we debate the assumption that the State’s decision reflects a unified position in international relations and discuss the possibility of considering them disaggregated actions.

The field concept offered by Pierre Bourdieu (1971) provides us with the necessary tools to conceive the relationships between police forces and their power hierarchies within a circuit that has its transnational connections, which Bigo (2016) terms as ‘sociology of transnational guilds.’ Through this analytic lens, we have sought to identify the functional mechanisms of the transnational field of policing, constituted by police forces, regulatory agencies, and legal and other professionals who control crime in the public and private spheres. These relationships are sustained by a body of knowledge, ideas, work, routines, and activities they share and use to construct ties of identity and loyalty through different cooperation mechanisms (Bigo 2011).

According to Bourdieu (1971), the field is a relatively autonomous subsystem of relations characterised by sharing understandings, rules, values, expertise, and standard practices. Within this space, relations of cooperation, dispute, and competition are established and structured around accessing valued forms of capital, such as financial resources, knowledge, technology, or credentials. These connections form bonds of identity and loyalty, facilitating various mechanisms of exchange, cooperation, and the exercise of power. These connections transcend or occur alongside the formal relations established in the diplomatic field or what is traditionally assumed as interstate relations (Leander 2011; Bigo 2011).

Through the transnational field of policing, agencies dedicated to law enforcement and crime control exchange experiences and develop bonds of trust in their interpersonal relationships, which Bigo (2016) terms ‘solidarity at a distance.’ The US police forces positioned themselves in the centre of this field, wielding power in terms of material and prestige over the Brazilian police. This enabled them to impose their knowledge and guidelines and, therefore, their political agendas on their Brazilian counterparts. Some of these relationships were articulated informally, without governmental knowledge or formal mechanisms. Reports and analyses of this case have demonstrated concern in terms of this aspect, given the probable illegality of some of the steps taken in this investigation and the impact of possible international interference – outside of the control of the local government – on the political future of Brazil (The Intercept 2019). We are interested in understanding how transnational relationships between these police forces have been able to evade the supervision and guidance of their governments as part of a consistent strategy.

To a certain extent, the autonomy from governmental control and informality in transnational relations between police forces are foreseen and encouraged, given the need for exceptions and the agility that characterises police activities (UNODC 2019). This evaluation, however, can lead to the trap of believing that this is ‘technical cooperation,’ which is immune to interference from ‘governing policies’ that do not affect it (Bowling and Sheptycki 2012). This is why a secondary objective of this study is to stimulate reflection about the potential political implications of transnational relationships between police forces.

Historically, the US police forces have played a fundamental role in Brazilian criminal and public safety policies (Villela 2021; Ricart 2018). Since the middle of the last century, the United States has promoted assistance and training programs for Brazilian police forces, influencing them in terms of the formation and organisation of local police forces and the formulation of norms and public policies (Huggins 1989; Becker 2017). Fighting communism, drugs, money laundering, terrorism, and corruption have therefore played a broad role in the agendas which have shaped and justified these efforts.

The analysts who have followed Operation Car Wash have yet to evaluate it from an international perspective. Few have concentrated on the transnational nature of the corporations under investigation and the impacts of the operation in other countries (Pimenta and Greene 2020; Gonzalez-Ocantos and Hidalgo 2019). However, most analysts have sought to understand it from the point of view of conjunctural variables characteristic of Brazil at the time (for example, Kerche 2018; Marona and Kerche 2021). Among this dense and growing bibliography, work has yet to explore the relevant role of the FBI in these investigations. On the other hand, a growing literature on International Relations has paid growing attention to the transnational relations among police forces (for example Nadelmann 1993; Bowling and Sheptycki 2002; Kuzmarov 2009; Hufnagel 2014; Ricart 2019), though only few have been dedicated to cases involving Brazil (for example, Huggins 1998; Ricart 2018; Villela 2021), and none has focused on the growth of the anti-corruption agenda.

To address this gap, we are interested in understanding how the law enforcement agencies of the two countries interacted and how these interactions derived from a broader and enduring process. We argue that Operation Car Wash had the collaboration of the FBI due to a historic effort by the American police to build a transnational field of police cooperation from which bonds of proximity, trust, and alignment were constituted. Considering that, we propose to shed light on the international dimension of Operation Car Wash, conducted in Brazil from 2014 to 2021.

To accomplish this goal, we analyse official and leaked documents, informal interviews, and investigations by the press to identify the actors involved in this operation, the interests that they have pursued, their methods of interacting and relating, and the power hierarchies and dynamics within this field, as well as the political impacts of their relationships. Among the official documents, we mainly access bilateral treaties and reports produced by the Department of State on police cooperation activities, focusing on the International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports. Particularly aiming to capture the informational dimension of the American and Brazilian law enforcement professionals relations, we have made ample use of reports in the press and leaked documents from ‘Car Wash Leaks’ (or ‘Vaza Jato,’ in Portuguese) an investigation conducted by a group dedicated to analysing private messages exchanged by authorities during the Car Wash Operation (for example Apública 2019; The Intercept 2019).

The so-called ‘Vaza Jato’ event significantly impacted Brazilian politics. It refers to the leak of messages between then-judge Sergio Moro and prosecutors of Operation Car Wash, which were disclosed by the news website in mid-2019. These messages revealed conversations that raised questions about the impartiality of the operation and cast doubts on the ethical conduct of those involved. Its impacts are ongoing, such as the nullification of Judge Sergio Moro’s decisions due to his bias in the process, the subsequent annulment of charges against Lula, and his return as President of the Republic. Additionally, it led to the impeachment of Congressman Deltan Dallagnol, whose election could be attributed to his role as the coordinator of the Car Wash task force.

The referenced journalistic reports include materials produced by the journalists Natalia Viana, Rafael Neves, Andrew Fishman, Maryam Saleh, Alice Maciel, Glenn Greenwald, Betsy Reed, Leandro Demori, Igor Mello, Gabriel Sabóia, Jamil Chade, and Silvia Ribeiro, published by the news portals Agência Pública, The Intercept, and Uol. This broad group of journalists consolidated and analysed information, and brought evidence about how and through which channels the FBI was involved in Operation Car Wash. This article consists of three sections in addition to the introduction. The first will reconstitute the history of the Car Wash Operation, highlighting its international dimensions and pointing out the role of the FBI in formulating and conducting these investigations. The second will reflect on the functioning of the transnational field of policing, which has articulated the actions of the police forces in their conduction of Operation Car Wash in terms of the relations between the American and Brazilian police forces from the point of view of field analysis tools. The third will conclude with our main findings and suggest future research agendas we hope to encourage.

Operation Car Wash and its transnational aspects

Operation Car Wash was revealed to the press in 2014 as the most significant anti-corruption action in the history of Brazil. It targeted criminal organisations involved in money laundering, including agents in the public and private sectors. Its inauguration also pointed out irregularities in the domestic and international operations of Petrobras, the largest state company in the country (MPF 2022). The conducting of the operation involved articulation with several government bodies, including the Federal Police, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and the justice system of various states in Brazil, notably including the nucleus in the state of Paraná, led by Federal Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and Judge Sergio Moro (Kerche and Marona 2022). The operation charged hundreds of individuals, issuing bench warrants and more than a thousand search and seizure warrants, and also resulted in leaked private messages and telephone calls. It froze millions of reais and triggered an economic crisis, contributing to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, and leading to prison terms for various high-profile Brazilian businessmen and politicians (Armani 2022). Among the companies involved in this case were Odebrecht and Petrobras, which are transnational companies, and this also attracted the involvement of elites and judicial systems from other countries.

The operation also led to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was thus impeded from disputing the presidential election in 2018. This election leveraged the career of the presiding judge Sergio Moro, who in turn was named the ‘Super Minister of Justice’ by President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula’s conviction was annulled in 2021 by the Supreme Court, which considered Sergio Moro partial and concluded that the crimes which the former President was accused of were not under the jurisdiction of the 13th Civil Court of Curitiba because they had no relationship with the corruption in Petrobras, the original object of the Car Wash investigation (STF 2021). Car Wash Leaks gave a behind-the-scenes look at the investigations and undermined their legitimacy (The Intercept 2019). It revealed that at least a dozen FBI agents played an active role in the investigations (Viana and Neves 2020).

In this work, we argue that the cooperation between the American and Brazilian police forces preceded the operation itself and provided the framework it was based upon. In this study, we also demonstrate the leading role played by the United States and its police forces in constructing a transnational field of police cooperation, which articulated policies in various parts of the world to form trust and harmonising police knowledge and activities, and their impact, in this case, was quite significant.

As Bourdieu, Wacquant, and Farage (1994) highlight, the structure of a field is shaped by the hierarchical positions that actors occupy based on the capital they possess and the power relations established among them. In this sense, we observe the prominence of the United States in agenda and solution setting in combating corruption at the transnational level, leading them to become directly involved in the Brazilian operation.

The operation was officially closed in 2021, and the investigations still underway were taken over by the Special Acting Group in the Fight Against Organized Crime, which is responsible for organising task forces which assist with the work of the Federal Police. Even in this case, the FBI also participated, sharing their experiences in formulating and running task forces, considered references in this area by Brazilian institutions, as indicated by the Federal Police Manual of 2011, which includes testimonials by FBI agents. According to the document:

Due to the influence of the way criminal prosecution is conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy, the use of task forces has become routine (...) This form of investigating as a consortium emulates joint operations performed routinely in the United States, where task forces are shared among countless investigation bodies. (MPF 2011)

The manual recommends that extensive investigations be conducted based on task forces, defined as ‘a group of specialised people from various areas who join together temporarily to perform a given mission’ (Kercher and Marona 2022: 18). The first federal task force was Operation Banco Benestado which preceded 18 others during the first year of Lula’s administration alone. Operation Car Wash used learning from this experience of promoting institutional interactions between different bodies and functional areas of the state to execute an anti-corruption investigation. This model, criticised by Kerche and Marona (2022: 11), overlaps the functions of investigation, accusation, and judgement – exercised respectively by the Federal Police, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and the Courts – which brings tension to the divisions of power in a democratic state ruled by law. In addition, the task force model treats corruption in the criminal sphere and considers it to be a result of ‘organised crime,’ a term that has become typical in Brazilian legislation (Law nº 9034/1995, Law nº 12850/2013)also due to American influence (Woodiwiss 2001).

During the entire process, Judge Sergio Moro made a point of expressing the inspiration he derived from the Italian anti-corruption operation named ‘Clean Hands,’ which, such as the case analysed in this paper, made wide use of appeals to public opinion and to leaking portions of information in criminal accusations to journalists (Moro 2004). Both influences reinforce the idea that enforcement institutions are critical in this process and require robust budgets, powers, and greater autonomy from the government, reinforcing the possibility of a proactive and autonomous international articulation.

The organising of Operation Car Wash also derived from the Ministry of Justice’s creation of the National Strategy Against Corruption and Money Laundering (NSACML) in 2003. This network promotes joint and articulated work between different governmental bodies to combat money laundering and corruption. It should be noted that money laundering was criminalised in Brazil in 1998 (Law nº 9613/98) due to direct pressure on the Brazilian government from the United States (State Department 1998). In 1995, the Ministry of Justice, commanded by Nelson Jobim, created a commission to formulate a law against money laundering. The final project was presented to American authorities in Washington at a conference organised by the United States Internal Revenue Service in Brasília. Before the American authorities finally approved and celebrated the law, police officers, prosecutors, and other Brazilian authorities visited the United States to observe the model employed by American task forces in fighting crime (State Department 1997).

In 1998, banking secrecy was also broken, requiring an amendment to the 1988 Federal Constitution, which was also approved. Brazil adopted the American model based on the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. In compensation, Brazil was invited to join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a body under the aegis of the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development (OECD). Later, this law was revised (Law nº 12683/2012) due to the efforts of the NSACML, aligning it more explicitly with international legislation standards (Kerche 2018; Kerche and Marona 2022).

In a way, the creation of the NSACML represented a maturation of this process. It was celebrated by the American authorities, even though the challenge of coordinating and overcoming agency rivalries within the Brazilian government has recently been denounced by reports from the US State Department, placing in check the success of task force-style investigations (State Department 2018). To Kerche and Marona (2022: 1), the creation of the NSACML in 2003 was a landmark in the expansion of the powers of the Federal Police, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and the Court System in terms of autonomy and discretion, which would later be used to structure Operation Car Wash.

This relative autonomy has been a fundamental characteristic of transnational articulation with foreign agencies, as we have seen in this study, which indicates a relative autonomy of the transnational field itself (Bigo 2016). To these researchers, the operation resulted from the ‘formation of a consortium between portions of the political and judicial elites, in addition to the press, creating a favourable institutional environment greeted with applause by the United States.’ We will argue in this work that the role of the United States in this process was more than this and, in fact, consisted of providing technical resources, knowledge, and political support.

The NSACML and other efforts by the Federal Police in the fight against corruption incorporated much of what was learned during the long period of its interactions with the FBI and other US police forces. One aspect of this was the formulation of training programs, such as the National Training Program for the Fight Against Corruption and Money Laundering (NTPFACML), which eventually included the participation of the FBI (ENCCLA 2019). Far from being an isolated case, the FBI has a long history of proposing and participating in training sessions for Brazilian police officers (State Department 1997, 2007).

Sergio Moro was one of its beneficiaries. In 2009, he joined the ‘Bridges Project: Constructing Bridges for the Application of the Law in Brazil,’ offered by American agencies in Rio de Janeiro to Brazilian judges, prosecutors, and police officers to discuss the control of money laundering and the financing of terrorism, even before the anti-terrorism law was approved (Law nº 13260/2016). According to the final report, if the Executive Branch and the Ministry of Foreign Relations were reluctant to give importance to the anti-terrorism agenda, ‘the representatives of the judiciary sector present at the conference found the subject extremely interesting and important’ (Wikileaks 2009), which consolidated the base for the subsequent approval of the law in Congress. The telegram leaked by Wikileaks was entitled ‘Conference about Illicit Financing Uses the T Word with Success.’ This phrase demonstrates the lack of alignment between justice agents and the government on the one hand and, on the other, closer ties to American agents interested in strengthening the transnational field of policing that they were sharing. At the same event, the report tells us, there were sessions dedicated to ‘discussions of countless subjects, as well as suggestions for how Brazilians can work better with the United States’ (Wikileaks 2009).

At this event, Brazilian participants sought help from American agents in investigating complex financial processes, given that they had yet to be trained regarding the fundamentals of long-term investigations with proactive task forces (Wikileaks 2009). Based on this demand, the telegram tells us, a long-term training program needed to be planned in an urban centre due to local judicial support in cases which involved illicit financing, citing as references São Paulo and Curitiba: ‘This would give the Brazilians real experience in working in a proactive task force examining long-term illicit financing and would provide access to American specialists for continuous guidance and support’ (Wikileaks 2009), the American authorities stated.

Historically, there has been a deliberate effort by the FBI to pursue the elaboration and consolidation of a network of trustworthy police officers in the countries where it operates to influence the leaders of these bureaucracies and construct bonds of trust that will endure despite governmental oscillations in both countries. The idea is that members of this transnational field of policing should occupy relevant positions in their respective institutions, reproducing the learning gained from their foreign peers. The dispersion of technical specialists in various bureaucracies of the host country neutralises the perception that the United States is directly interfering in foreign countries (Huggins 1998). This strategy continues characterising the cooperation between the American and Brazilian police authorities today.

One of the FBI agents who participated in Operation Car Wash, Steve Moore, coordinated policing in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup. In an interview with the American press, he emphasised that the FBI works with groups of Brazilian police officers who have been ‘carefully selected and trained by the United States for many years’ (Viana and Neves 2020). In commanding important police roles, they have the potential to incorporate and diffuse what they have learned through their membership in these transnational police networks.

The close ties between FBI agents and members of Operation Car Wash are evident in the documents leaked by the investigation. Since 2015, the FBI has been actively interested in expanding its international presence in the fight against corruption. That is precisely what George ‘Ren’ McEachern, a former FBI agent who supervised the Lava Jato investigations on behalf of the US Department of Justice, says. That year, Ren opened three squads dedicated to international anti-corruption investigations in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. To this end, he accumulated a 300% increase in the FBI’s budget (Viana and Neves 2000b). Therefore, he had a leading role in agenda-setting within the transnational policing field.

At the beginning of the operation, also in 2015, a delegation of 17 American agents, including prosecutors from the Department of Justice and FBI agents, travelled to Curitiba for a secret meeting with members of the Federal Prosecutor’s office and with lawyers of businesspeople under investigation in Operation Car Wash. Through this meeting, they sought to establish a partnership with the FBI in their investigations, which included negotiating with the lawyers of those collaborating in the investigation and sending them to testify in the United States, avoiding the restrictions of Brazilian laws. The meeting agendas were not released at the request of the American agents, and the Ministry of Justice only found out about this visit when the meetings were already underway (Viana, Fishman and Saleh 2019). By law, however, mediation in relations with foreign police forces should be performed by the Department of Assets and International Justice Cooperation (DAIJC) of the Ministry of Justice. Prosecutor Vladimir Aras defended himself against this accusation by saying that the connections with the FBI had to do with a step before the formalisation envisaged by the law (Viana, Fishman and Saleh 2020).

Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol responded that the Ministry of Justice should consult the American Department of Justice ‘because they asked us to keep it confidential.’ They also asked Prosecutor Vladimir Aras, the Head of the International Cooperation Sector of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, to avoid divulging the names of the American investigators to the Brazilian government to avoid ‘making noise’ with their international partners (Viana, Fishman and Saleh 2020). These statements reveal a favouring of American agents over their Brazilian affiliates, which thereby infringes upon the legal terms of the Accord concerning Judicial Assistance in Penal Matters (1997) that establishes that intermediating relationships with the American Department of Justice are the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice.

Multilateral and bilateral mechanisms formalise the cooperation between justice agents in enforcing international operations such as Car Wash. We can include in this process: (1) the promulgation of Mutual Legal Penal Assistance (MLPA) between Brazil and the United States (Decree 3,810/01); (2) the Convention regarding the Combat Against the Corruption of Foreign Governmental Employees in the International Commercial Transactions of the OECD (Decree 3,678/2000), which has led to the typification of crimes involving active corruption and the traffic of influence (Law 10467/2002); (3) the promulgation of Mercosur’s Judicial Protocol for Mutual Assistance in Penal Matters (Decree 3.468/2000); (4) the celebration of bilateral accords regarding judicial cooperation with the United States, Colombia and Peru (Decrees 3810, 3895 and 3988, respectively); (5) the promulgation of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption (Decree 4410/2002), with an emphasis on preventive measures and cooperation between countries, including cooperation in justice and policing; (6) the promulgation of the United Nations Convention Against Organized Crime (Decree 5015/2004) (7) the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (Decree 5687/2006); (8) the Inter-American Convention regarding Mutual Assistance in Penal Matters (Decree 6340/2008); as well as (9) various mechanisms proposed by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATFML) (Rodrigues 2020). As Andreas and Nadelmann (2006) recognised, the United States has been a protagonist in formulating the global agenda and control mechanisms against transnational crime.

The MLPA is the central treaty which formalises cooperation in penal matters, and it is a fundamental mechanism in the participation of the US Justice Department in Operation Car Wash. The accord regulates mutual assistance in inquiries, investigations, penal actions, the prevention of crime, and criminal trials, including providing testimony, and documents, locating and identifying people, search and seizure warrants, and levying fines, among other possible actions. This accord makes it possible to formalise the daily interactions and exchanges promoted between justice and police agents in both countries when criminal investigations have been initiated.

In conducting interviews with informants in this case, Vladimir Aras recalled that the treaty norms require Brazilian authorities to lead the interviews but also indicate possible flexibility in this aspect, permitting the companionship of FBI agents so they may ask questions. An alternative to these legal barriers offered by Prosecutor Orlando Martello was letting informants travel on their own to the United States to be interviewed directly by the American authorities. To guarantee the cooperation of these informants, he suggested, ‘We can pressure them a little bit to go to the United States, especially those who do not have financial problems.’ This proposal, however, was not formally authorised by the Brazilian agents (Viana, Fishman and Saleh 2020).

Despite the ample set of norms that deal with how cooperation should be conducted, we can note a certain degree of informality and autonomy among Brazilian agents in relation to the instances and mechanisms of governmental control, which make it possible that the objectives and interests of these agencies are not always in line with those defined by political authorities. This is what Didier Bigo (2016) would call ‘solidarity at a distance,’ which refers to how actors share a common solidarity or identification, despite being geographically separated and belonging to different political entities.

In the transnational security field context, ‘solidarity at a distance’ is built by sharing knowledge, practices, and security norms. That said, even though police forces are state agencies, their international engagement is not always mediated by government representatives and can be oriented by their own agendas, sometimes articulated with their foreign peers.

This does not mean such bonds of trust and solidarity cannot cross and penetrate the governmental level (Bourdieu 1994). Sergio Moro, who had been building a relationship of trust with foreign agents for years, committed to strengthening law enforcement cooperation between the United States and Brazil when he assumed the position of Minister of Justice. For example, in 2019, the FBI office in Brazil requested a larger volume of resources from the US government to expand its team and address more requests for international cooperation in investigations in Brazil (Viana 2020).

It is common for joint events and training to promote the transfer of expertise and stimulate the socialisation of agents from both countries. They aim to develop solid bonds of trust between American and Brazilian authorities, constructing a direct communication channel without the need for intermediation by governmental spheres. The related episodes reveal an effort to nourish connections on an interpersonal level between agents who have had the same experiences to build up this trust. This process permits the formation of a transnational field of policing. Through this channel, knowledge, norms, and practices related to police operations, investigations and even the formulation of laws and public policies were disseminated. In doing so, we aim to demonstrate that US law enforcement agencies played a leading role in the formation of a transnational policing field through which they built a network of socialisation, solidarity, and shared knowledge, values, and standard practices (Bourdieu 1971).

Some of these interpersonal connections can be identified in the analysed documents. Leslie R. Backschies, an FBI agent who was one of the leaders in cooperation with the Brazilian authorities, was a crucial figure in this process. During his over twenty years of experience in this organisation, Leslie has always worked internationally, occupying a position in the National Security division of the FBI in the areas of counterterrorism and responses to arms of mass destruction, and he later worked in the international corruption unit for Latin America, which was created in 2015. This is because in 2014 Backschies was assigned to help with the investigations of Operation Car Wash (Viana and Neves 2020). His first trip to Brazil occurred in 2012 when he visited the Military Police in São Paulo on a mission which sought solutions for possible terrorist threats to the 2014 World Cup (Viana and Neves 2020). This information indicates that American agents have had lots of exposure to the Brazilian police and not just on the federal level but with state police forces as well.

Representing the anti-corruption division, Backschies assumed responsibility for operations dedicated to applying the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), an American law designed to punish companies that commit corruption or bribe employees of foreign governments, even when these crimes do not occur on American soil. This law laid the groundwork for prosecuting the leading companies involved in Operation Car Wash, especially Odebrecht and Petrobras. As a result, Odebrecht had to pay US$2.6b in fines to the American, Brazilian, and Swiss governments for the criminal movement of money in bank accounts in New York to transfer it offshore. At the same time, the company negotiated agreements with other countries where it operated, namely Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal, and Venezuela. The Department of Justice called it ‘the largest foreign bribery case in history’ (Pressly 2018). Petrobras, in turn, signed an accord to pay US$1.78b, the largest fine ever levied by the Department of Justice (Viana and Neves 2020).

Responsible for applying this law, Backschies acted directly in Brazil in formulating and running Operation Car Wash alongside Brazilian Federal Police agents and the Brazilian justice system. In 2015, Deltan Dallagnol, representing the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, presented a bill to the Brazilian Congress – ‘10 anti-corruption measures’ – and Backschies was photographed next to the campaign poster. The reactions to the photo reveal the prestige the Brazilian agents attribute to their American colleagues. Deltan Dellagnol said ‘The photo turned out great! Leslie appears in every photo lol,’ associating the image with the film series Mission Impossible. His words reveal that Brazilian agents sought approval and help from those recognised as international references in the fight against crime. More than this, they attributed prestige to the opportunity to work alongside American crime enforcement agencies.

This photo was taken during a talk organised by the Secretariat of International Cooperation of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in São Paulo, integrating their members to explain how the American FPCA law functions. Also participating in the event were FBI agents Jeff Pfeiffer and Patrick Kramer and George ‘Ren’ McEachern, the Director of the FBI’s International Corruption Squad in Washington, DC (Viana and Neves 2020b). On that occasion, he praised international cooperation and stated that in Brazil, the FBI ‘provides technical support for investigations, regarding encryption, mobile telephony, and cloud data, with a cyber analyst based in Brasília’ (cited in Viana and Neves, 2020b).

Brazilian prosecutor Thémea Danelon considered it ‘an excellent opportunity to learn about an efficient system for fighting corruption’ (cited in Viana, Fishman and Saleh 2020). The opportunity included a trip to Washington DC, where Danelon gave a course about Operation Car Wash, deemed a sign of recognition and a seal of approval by Brazilian authorities (Viana e Neves 2020). Leslie reinforced this recognition in an interview: ‘Our relationship with Brazil is a model of collaboration for the countries which are fighting financial crimes’ (Viana and Neves 2020). Danelon commemorated this but warned, ‘The FBI agents supported the operation, but you cannot publish the photo, okay? They will not allow it’ (Viana and Neves 2020). Foreign authorities cannot formally participate in campaigns to approve norms in the Brazilian Congress. Vladimir Aras, responsible for the Prosecutor’s Office international cooperation, also warned about legal issues involved in their articulation with the FBI (Viana and Neves 2020).

Even so, the investigations indicate that members of the Operation Car Wash task force in Curitiba contacted informally with authorities in the United States, Switzerland and Monaco seeking illicit proof against the operation targets (Mello et al. 2019). Proof acquired illegally, without approval through the formal channels of international cooperation, can annul a judicial prosecution. Even though they were conscious of the risks, ‘it is natural to take a few calculated risks in large investigations,’ Dellagnol rationalised (Mello et al. 2019). In order to use the data in these judicial processes, the Operation Car Wash agents relied on various ways to ‘clean’ this evidence, seeking ways to legalise and formalise it.

During the investigations, prosecutors Rodrigo Janot and Paulo Roberto Galvão asked for help directly from the FBI to ‘hack’ Odebrecht systems that used cryptography, believing that this direct channel would be more fruitful than a formal request via the embassy. In the words of Paulo Roberto, ‘The FBI also [sic] had total knowledge of the investigations, which the embassy did not have’ (Viana and Neves 2020). This same request was also made to Swiss authorities and messages exchanged by the prosecutors indicate that they achieved access to this data illegally. The messages also indicate that data obtained illegally from Monaco was also used in the warrant for the arrest of Renato Duque in 2015 (Mello et al. 2019).

This episode reveals that specific steps of policing on the transnational level operated informally. In addition, the case indicates that policing agencies interacted with each other in an autonomous field of action which was not always submitted to the guidance of their respective nations but instead directed toward transnational interests and loyalties. We may further observe that the transnational dimensions of Operation Car Wash transcended the relationships between American and Brazilian agencies. However, the evidence also reveals that the articulation with the justice systems in other parts of the world was mediated by the FBI, whose recognition and reach is uniquely global.

We can also point out that this ‘success story’ involved actors inside and outside their fields of action, conceding credentials, recognition, budgets, and the ability to circulate in public and private spheres. We can cite two notable examples. Sergio Moro became a speaker and consultant for private initiatives internationally. Briefly, he served as the Minister of Justice in the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) before announcing his candidacy for President in 2022 (The Intercept 2022). George ‘Ren’ McEachern, the lead FBI agent stationed in Brazil during the investigations, was later hired by an international corporation to teach methods of compliance and share his experiences (Viana and Neves 2020).

The operation’s impact on Brazilian politics, in turn, cannot be measured. The FBI’s substantial involvement in the creation and conduction of Operation Car Wash raises issues that are central to international relations, shedding light on how power relationships on an international level are expressed, its external influence on critical domestic subjects, and as highlighted, the undermining of the unity of the state in its international interactions. This will be the objective of our examination.

Unveiling the rise of a transnational field of policing

The interactions between law enforcement agencies and professionals observed in Operation Car Wash are not a novelty in history but rather the product of a long process of emergence and consolidation in the transnational field of policing, encouraged mainly by the United States and its law enforcement agencies. In this topic, we will recall the historic origins of this process and the bases of the functioning of this ‘field’ which will help us comprehend the interactions between Brazilian and American agents in this case study.

Assistance and training programs for foreign police forces have been part of American foreign policy for decades (Huggins 1998). Through them, American police agencies have extended their professional network worldwide, connecting with their foreign peers and seeking to control and inhibit crime that affects the security and interests of the United States (Justice Department 2004). No other country in the world mobilises such diplomatic and financial forces to collect evidence under foreign jurisdictions, investigate corruption and other types of crime in other countries, and finance foreign police forces, putting pressure on foreign governments to criminalise certain practices and adapt their justice systems to be in line with the United States (Andreas and Nadelmann 2006).

Historically, Brazil has been a relevant beneficiary of assistance from American law enforcement officers. The fight against drug trafficking has been one of the main drivers of this cooperation since the 1970s, which intensified significantly during the 1990s. Within this context, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the American police force dedicated exclusively to repressing drug-related crimes, has assumed a prominent role, making it the police force with the most significant reach worldwide (Nadelmann 1993; Ricart 2018). This is due, in part, to its efforts to make institutional and normative reforms in this country to emulate the American ‘war on drugs’ (Villela 2021; Ricart 2018).

Since then, ‘new threats’ have appeared in the sights of these programs, such as terrorism, money laundering, and security for large events (the World Cup and the Olympics) and, more recently, corruption (Villela 2021). With this, American authorities have sought to improve the capacity of partner police forces to inhibit activities that affect the interests of the United States (Justice Department 2007). To accomplish this, police agents – especially the DEA and the FBI – have worked in American embassies to offer assistance and training to connect with local police forces and access information needed to locate and extradite criminals or terrorists. They have constructed relationships with this goal in mind, sharing information, financing, and supporting local operations (Justice Department 2004).

Nowadays, the FBI has 63 legal attaché offices and another 15 smaller offices in strategic cities, covering 180 countries. Its functions abroad include: (1) coordinating requests for FBI or host country assistance overseas; (2) conducting investigations in coordination with host governments; (3) sharing investigative leads and information; (4) coordinating FBI training classes for police in their geographic areas; (5) briefing embassy counterparts from other agencies, including law enforcement agencies and ambassadors; (6) managing country clearances; (7) providing situation reports concerning cultural protocols; (8) assessing political and security climates; and (9) coordinating victim and humanitarian assistance (FBI 2022). It is fundamental for them to guarantee robust relationships with local agents to accomplish these functions. A job listing for an investigator in the American embassy in Brazil recognises that investigations conducted on foreign soil ‘are often highly controversial and may have significant social and political implications’ (Viana 2020).

Seeking to align its policy with its foreign partners, the FBI provides ‘training in technical abilities and basic and advanced principles of investigations which promote cooperation and help in the collection of evidence’ (FBI 2022). In other words, they act proactively to make partners aware of problems and guarantee the offer of the best solutions to these problems, diffusing their agendas, norms, and techniques. Seminars, training sessions and other events offered by American agencies are instrumental to socialising agents from various parts of the world, permitting the diffusion of knowledge and forming bonds of trust. Training sessions usually occur in the host countries. However, they also occur at FBI Headquarters in Virginia or at International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEA) located abroad, created especially to promote international cooperation among law enforcement officers (Justice Department 2007).

Federal Police forces have actively participated in three types of training offered by American agencies, hosting some of these events and financing and receiving financing for sending police to events abroad. During the past decade, Brazil has participated in the Financial Investigative Techniques Training (FIT) program offered by the ILEA unit in San Salvador. In parallel, Brazil has hosted many training sessions offered by American agencies, including courses about combatting financial crimes and corruption. In 2016, during the height of Operation Car Wash, the Criminal Investigations division of the Internal Revenue Service held courses on this subject matter in São Paulo (30 participants) and in Curitiba (29 participants), where the operation was headquartered (State Department 2017).

These social spaces for socialisation offered by American law enforcement were fundamental to creating a type of police ‘club’ articulated globally, encouraging, stimulating, mediating, and leading various mechanisms that make interaction possible and forming bonds between agents from all over the world. Based on this historic process, we have identified that American law enforcement has been fundamental to creating a ‘field’ on a transnational scale with other police forces around the world, playing a central role in this network of relationships, providing financial resources, support, guidance, and technology – especially to developing countries in areas under American influence, such as Latin America, including Brazil.

We understand a field to be a relatively autonomous subsystem of relations characterised by sharing knowledge, values, and standard practices (Bourdieu 1971). The field does not need to be a formalised corp. It is a network of permanent interactions among actors whose logic and composition can adjust over time, including not just police officers, prosecutors, and judges but also military personnel or private security employees (Leander 2008; Bigo 2013). The interactions in each field are negotiated based on their particular ‘capital,’ which defines the power resources in dispute and the terms of the relationships that occur within them. Within this social space, relationships of cooperation and competition are structured around access to this capital, which can be financial resources, technology, knowledge, credentials, or any other resource that is the object of a power dispute (Leander 2011). Therefore, the most influential actors in the field assume authority to attribute value to the capital in possession of the other members, and they can dictate the nature of the interactions within this social space (Bourdieu, Wacquant, and Farage 1992).

It is essential to say that fields do not exist in a vacuum, and autonomy is relative and mediated by the influence of and intersections with other coexisting fields. In some cases, various fields coinhabit a meta-field, whose influence is such that it can impose its will on the other subfields. To Bourdieu (1994; 2014), the state is a meta-field, constituting a group of subfields – administrative, congressional, or policing – within and between which power disputes occur. Using this interpretation, we find that the police – the institution and its agents – exercise their functions of applying the law authorised by a mandate conceded by the state, representing its government, but the police are not an extension of the state itself, and its decisions are not always derived from those made by its governments. In other words, the state is a field of action and dispute, and we cannot envisage it as a homogeneous unit that acts in unison.

Indeed, police bureaucracies are often presented as instruments at the disposition of the government. The FBI and the DEA have been instrumentalised on various occasions to achieve foreign policy objectives (Huggins 1998; Paley 2015). In other cases, however, these agencies have become so powerful – due to the attention they receive from the press and their access to the budget and other sources of prestige and relevance – that they not only acquire autonomy but can influence and exercise power over their own governments, defining agendas and demanding normative reforms (Bowling and Sheptycki 2012). This appears to be the case of the Federal Police, which not only gained political power and prestige from society – as a function of its growing access to resources and the dimensions that the anti-corruption agenda assumed in the public debate – but could impose its will on its government.

With this, we wish to say that police forces organise themselves within a specific subculture (Bowling and Sheptycki 2012), constituted based on their missions and knowledge of their functions, which leads them to define their own agendas of interests and loyalties which can come into conflict with others. Thus, law enforcement agents can feel more aligned with their ties to the state and their subordination to their governments, and at other times more connected to the transnational field of policing as a function of the missions, values and knowledge that are shared with police agencies from around the world. This is what Didier Bigo (2016, 406) calls ‘solidarity at a distance.’

This analytical tool allows us to conceive of the disaggregated action of a nation whose state agencies and bureaucrats act and circulate transnationally based on their ties to different fields structured nationally and transnationally. In the case of Operation Car Wash, this thinking tool helps us understand the transnational articulation among law enforcement agents, the autonomy and informality within these strong relationships in the face of governmental control, the power hierarchy among them, and the relevance of these connections for ‘high-level policy.’

Researchers have pointed out a series of governmental decisions that ceded unusual autonomy and discretion to justice system actors, especially the Federal Police, which created favourable conditions for Operation Car Wash to take on this dimension (Kerche and Marona 2022). In this work, we have sought to demonstrate that this autonomy also favoured its articulation on the transnational level, evading democratic control mechanisms. The participation of FBI agents in formulating and conducting these investigations without the knowledge of the Ministry of Justice and other governmental bodies is an expression of this process.

In this same sense, analysts believe that signing and promulgating multilateral conventions, formulating norms seeking to classify and control financial crimes, and creating the NSACML were fundamental steps in constructing this case study. In our analysis, we have also sought to demonstrate that the United States participated in formulating the ‘problem’ and the ‘responses’ deemed appropriate to resolve it (Edwards and Gill 2002). As recognised by the specialised literature, the United States was the primary agent of the global diffusion of this ‘threat’ and the tools used to control ‘transnational organised crime,’ which was a term that they also disseminated (Pereira 2015). The main idea that transnational crime represents a threat to the international order was driven by a group of forces for the internationalisation of crime, including the formulation of international regimes to prohibit and control these activities and the expansion of police agency jurisdictions abroad to promote the harmonisation of the norms and efforts to control crime (Andreas and Nadelmann 2006). As Viana (2022) perceives, there has been a deliberate effort to construct a solutions market for problems which are evaluated politically as universal, validating a formula of success – presented by the American authorities – which can serve various contexts.

As much as multilateral and bilateral accords establish formal parameters for cooperation between agencies, Brazilian and American police forces maintain a routine of regular informal meetings to exchange information. Producing intelligence, sharing information on underway investigations, and meetings arranged for training sessions and seminars are the main socialisation drivers between these agents. Their growing proximity and daily informal coexistence permit the development of interpersonal bonds of trust, stimulating the establishment of longer-lasting cooperation that is less subject to bureaucratic formalities.

Over time, these American policing strategies have sustained themselves precisely by constructing police networks of trust in partner countries which have influenced the leaders of these bureaucracies, constructing personal ties that can survive governmental oscillations in both countries (Hufnagel 2014). The dispersion of technical employees with the bureaucracies of the host country, in Huggins’s interpretation (1998), also helped neutralise the perception that the United States was exercising some direct influence over foreign governments. For our analysis, this enables us to understand the autonomy of the Federal Police in its relations with the FBI. The informality which characterised these interactions sometimes transcended their own institutional and legal parameters, evading formal control mechanisms as indicated by the data (Viana and Neves 2020).

The Car Wash Leaks also disclosed virtual messages exchanged among Brazilian and American agents, which enabled us to understand what kind of cooperation the American agents received from their foreign peers. We have perceived a position of leadership and superiority on the part of the FBI in relation to its Brazilian peers. Even though there may have been pressure from the American embassy on police units that received American assistance, the evidence reveals that the federal police invested in a closer relationship with the Americans, seeking training and improving their daily work routines and recognition. The American agencies have a lot of prestige and recognition among their Brazilian peers, which positions them as a reference in the fight against crime. The photos with FBI agents and referring to them as ‘celebrities’ reveals this perception (Viana and Neves 2020). The FBI’s seal of quality was broadly recognised and functioned as a credential in the eyes of its peers.

Conclusion

Firstly, we have sought to encourage reflection on Operation Car Wash as an international subject. Among various possibilities of analysis, we propose highlighting the role of the FBI in formulating and developing the entire investigative process. We argue that these connections were not occasional but rather part of a historic effort by the United States to construct a network of trust with police forces worldwide, including Brazil. We interpret this network of connections as a ‘field’ in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms. We believe that consolidating a transnational field among law enforcement professionals was crucial to strengthening bonds of trust and the joint efforts made in the operation in question.

Other international dimensions of the operation could be explored in future studies, such as the interests and articulation of economically interested transnational elites. In addition to the market movement generated by the crisis provoked by Brazilian corporations, we can also highlight how professionals involved in the operation became real ‘celebrities,’ making it possible for them to migrate to private initiatives, give talks, and even run for political office. In this work, we have sought to focus solely on the transnational connections between police and justice officers.

We observe that informality is a characteristic of this connection. During our analysis, it was notable that the Car Wash task force acted autonomously with its foreign peers concerning government control mechanisms, termed solidarity at a distance by Bigo (2016). This fact leads us to reflect critically on the unified nature of the state and its international relations. Operation Car Wash demonstrates that state actors, namely police forces, could articulate transnationally with their loyalties not necessarily tied to their respective governmental spheres.

The reports made available by Car Wash Leaks are also evidence of the modus operandi that operates the field. Conferences, events, and training sessions assist not only in the transfer of knowledge but also in the construction of spaces for socialisation to consolidate personal relationships and bonds of trust between police and justice officers in both countries. There was a deliberate effort to create relationships of trust with Brazilian authorities, constructing a direct channel with police forces in a manner that was able to influence police work, investigations, the formulation of laws, and government policies. This diagnosis leads us to reflect on the spaces for interaction and exchange that facilitate the global circulation of policies.

Our idea is that this analysis effort should continue after Operation Car Wash. This historical examination is reflexive, and beyond the mere description of the evidence, it opens a path to analysing transnational relations conducted by state agents and agencies in parallel to intergovernmental relations in the field of security as well as other fields. The case in question makes us ask what are the potential political impacts of these relationships, which, even though intense, have yet to receive much attention in the scientific literature, which delegates transnationality to the private sphere, reducing state agencies to the dichotomous national and international categories.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Sept 2024
• Date of issue
  May/Aug 2024

History

• Received
  16 Nov 2022
• Accepted
  13 July 2023