What did Rory Stewart say about corruption in Brazilian politics and Lula's past?

Rory Stewart used Brazil to explain what people mean when they call Latin American politics corrupt. He said the Petrobras and Odebrecht scandal implicated 271 of 594 members of Congress and involved around $3 billion in bribes. Lula himself was jailed, and his successor Dilma Rousseff tried to make him her chief of staff to give him immunity. Stewart added that Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who jailed Jair Bolsonaro, now faces claims that a disgraced banker paid his wife's law firm tens of millions of dollars.

• Senator Delcídio do Amaral's plea bargain exposed much of the bribery and hush money.
• Alastair Campbell noted that Jair Bolsonaro is serving a long sentence at home and that Flávio Bolsonaro appears to have left the country.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Rest Is Politics (2026-10-28). Read the whole episode summary →

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