Description
On a stormy afternoon in January 2017, a small plane plunged into the turquoise waters off Paraty, one of Brazil’s most idyllic coastal towns. Among the dead was Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki, who was overseeing the largest corruption investigation in the country’s history. Eight months earlier, his son had publicly warned of threats to the family. In a country convulsed by scandal, how could the judge’s death be understood as a simple accident?
Beginning with the crash, Alex Hochuli traces the extraordinary drama of Lava Jato, Operation Car Wash, as it exposed a vast system of bribery linking politicians, state enterprises, and construction giants. Business leaders went to prison, judges became popular heroes, a president was impeached, and millions took to the streets. For some, Brazil was finally confronting its culture of impunity. For others, a crusade for justice had become a weapon for seizing power.
Supreme Crash explores what happens when corruption becomes the explanation for everything and politics itself becomes a form of suspicion. Moving between suspicious deaths, courtroom revelations, and the spectacle of public indignation, Hochuli asks whether the desire to punish the powerful can produce a vision of a different society — or merely rearrange the forces governing the existing one.
The 2027 election of Lula da Silva and a new banking scandal bring the story into the present, where old protagonists return in altered roles. In Brazilian politics, everyone and everything has an afterlife — unless they end up dead.
