The Internationalization of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor’s Office: Anti-Corruption and Corporate Investments in the 2000s

The success of different categories of legal professionals in building positions of state power in Brazil since the end of the military regime is in line with the legitimation of models of law and international cooperation. This article focuses on the connections between Brazilian legal actors and the international ‘fight against corruption’. By looking at the international connections of Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), we aim to show how the promotion of anti-corruption models of law is the result of [...]

The Internationalization of the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office: Anti-Corruption and Corporate Investments in the 2000s (2020) 14 (1) e0008 -2/35 ule of law formats within countries that moved from military to democratic regimes in the 1980s were influenced by a twofold process. On the one hand, there were the international movements that took part in the resistance to the military and in the reconstruction of the juridical-political order. Among them were pro-human rights NGOs and development cooperation agencies involved in 'exporting democracy' (DEZALAY and GARTH, 2002). On the other hand, the process of reconstruction of the rule of law provided opportunities for reproduction strategies, with new symbolic investments and functions for judicial elites arising as part of transition processes and the drawing up of new constitutions. In the decades following the end of the military regimes, these groups strove to build independent power bases anchored in the courts, public ministries, and the expansion of state bureaucracy that were permeated by models of respect for legal rules (BOURDIEU, 2012;ENGELMANN, 2017).
Brazil is one of the most representative cases in South America of the success of judicial elites in building such power bases in a democratic regime. This article focuses on what we understand to be a second moment in this process of the rise of legal practitioners within the power space, following the construction and accumulation of political and symbolic capital in judicial institutions during the period subsequent to re-democratization.
The scenario involves connections between autonomous institutions, especially the Public Prosecutor's Office, and international movements that drive the anti-corruption agenda. We intend to show that this international connection This process involved a second generation of legal specialists recruited for state careers from the 2000s 2 who did not participate in the constitutional debates and corporate battles of the first decade after the military regime. This 'consolidation' of the political power of judicial actors in recent decades occurred through their greater autonomy vis-à-vis the political space. Their actions differ greatly from those of the 'gentleman politicians of law' (DEZALAY and GARTH, 2002;ENGELMANN, 2006) or the magistrates' and prosecutors' associations who took part in the Constituent Assembly (MACIEL and KOERNER, 2014) and were present in political life throughout the 1990s (ARANTES, 2002;ENGELMANN, 2006). Their political and corporate activism sought to promote democracy and social justice through the creation of important relational axes with international human rights movements 3 . Internal movements in the legal field also reinforced this tendency, such as the founding of the Association of Judges for Democracy in 1991 and the alternative law movement (1990 to 1995) which sought to deconstruct the 'neutrality' of the law and involve judicial institutions in the political debate and resistance to the neoliberal agenda of the Collor and Cardoso governments (see ENGELMANN, 2006).
In our period, institutions endowed with considerable autonomy and consolidated power established relationships with both internal political movements and the international space. One of the strategies can be found in the anti-corruption movements that occupied the center of the Brazilian political agenda in our period. The discourse of cleaning up politics and the 'fight against corruption' ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 2 Although further and more extensive studies are needed, a 'generation effect' in the increase of the anticorruption agenda in the Public Prosecution Service may be postulated from an analysis of the professional and academic pathways of the prosecutors who have led the anti-corruption operation task forces and have been part of institutional internationalization movements over the last decade. 3 In recent years, the contradiction between the MPF's political activism and its judicial activism has progressively intensified, resulting in the externalization of a genuine intergenerational conflict. In 2019, the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for Citizen's Rights, an MPF body composed of public prosecutors who joined the institution in the 1980s and 90s, issued a statement on the leaks of conversations between prosecutors involved in Operation Lava Jato, to the effect that 'efforts to tackle corruption need to comply with human rights standards' (MINISTÉRIO PÚBLICO FEDERAL, 2019b (FEDERAL PUBLIC PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE)) and emphasizing the importance of due process and freedom of the press.

For a political sociology of anti-corruption
Expanding as a catechism that appeals to the strength of moral ideas and the technical rationality of global markets, 'anti-corruption' anchors itself in the space of national power through the transformation of the law, the creation of anticorruption agencies and public transparency. The literature on anti-corruption programs and initiatives points to the experiences of regime transition in Eastern European countries from the 1990s onwards as representative of the expanding phenomenon of agencies promoting this agenda (SCHERRER et al., 2009;SMILOV, 2009;SOUZA, 2010). Several works have demonstrated how these initiatives are leveraged in the course of domestic political struggles and election campaigns.
They also show how certain political forces connect themselves to NGOs and international bodies (DJALILI, 2000;FARAVEL-GARRIGUES, 2009;HEURTAUX, 2009;PUJAS, 2000). Such studies highlight the importance of taking into consideration the import-export logic of these movements and not simply attributing the phenomena to 'external pressure' on the space of domestic power. A key area of research on this phenomenon concerns anti-corruption operations. More specifically, the 'hyper-activism' of judicial agents and control bureaucracies enhanced by the mediatization of political and financial scandals.
Studies of the most famous European cases of the 1990s, such as 'Operazione Mani Pulite' in Italy (BRIQUET, 2001;VAUCHEZ, 2004) and the scandals that resulted in the sentencing of politicians in France (ROUSSEL, 2002;VAUCHEZ, 2017) and Spain (PUJAS, 2000) have shown how this works. Their authors discuss the political meanings of these operations and to what extent they fit into the ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 5 The notion of lawfare is a broad one and is also employed by authors who discuss the social basis of the relationship between morality and politics, such as in research on how voters perceive corruption and politicians who are sentenced in court. See Lascoumes and Nagels (2015). 6 For more on the concept of lawfare, see Ansah (2010). Corroborating the hypotheses of Briquet (2001), Roussel (2002) Lascoumes and Nagels (2015) highlight three key factors that deserve to be considered in order to understand the involvement of judicial agents and civil servants in processes involving financial and political elites. First, adherence to a professional culture of independence strongly associated with legal prerogatives. This is followed by legalism opposed to favoritism for elites. This legalism does not mean 'obedience to the system', but a point from which prosecutors interpret facts and break with the conservative routine of a priori protection for elites. Finally, Lascoumes and Nagels (2015) point out that another potentiating factor of 'anticorruption' operations is the organization of work and the division of roles that have evolved within the judiciary, police and administrative-financial control bureaucracies.
The spread of the 'anti-corruption' gospel in judicial institutions and state bureaucracies and its overlap with political battles in an importer country of political and legal models (BADIE, 1992) presents a complex challenge. An understanding of the logics surrounding the strategies and tactics of this import- export movement and their overlap with national power games has become crucial.
As Dezalay and Garth (2002) and Engelmann (2017)  In the terms of this general discussion, the research underlying this article starts out with a more systematic understanding of the institutional cooperation networks that link judicial agents with the international anti-corruption space. We started out by looking at international treaties and agreements participated in by the Brazilian government, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Judiciary. In addition to cooperation documents, we looked at reports on cooperation and the international circulation of the agents leading the process as sources. The goal here was to identify recurring patterns that would allow us to clarify links with the international space. We took an especially probing look at the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office's involvement in international cooperation. One key source were the records of leave for travel abroad taken by public prosecutors between 2008 and 2018. This gave us a broader picture of destination countries as well as the profile of the most frequently recurring anticorruption-related events.

International cooperation and investments by the legal elite
International anti-corruption cooperation involves building a space for formal and informal prescriptions, networks and agreements between NGOs, international organizations, development agencies and legal and police professionals. At the national end of this space, stand-out features include the  (Table 05).
In the 1990s, with leadership from the World Bank and the IMF, financial agencies also included anti-corruption prescriptions in 'good governance'  Prosecutor's Office, but also on internal anti-corruption operations through the adoption of penal negotiation models, asset recovery techniques (and recovered asset management) and intensified data sharing, as well as the adoption of an 'international anti-corruption regime' to combat money-laundering in the national space (TOURINHO, 2018). In a general sense, the most concrete result is that the networks for sharing technical research information were expanded to an international scale.   Take all necessary steps to establish that under its laws it is a criminal offense for any person intentionally to offer, promise or give any improper financial or other advantage, either directly or through intermediaries, from a foreign public official, to the official in question or to third parties. Partner: government of Brazil.
GAFILAT is a regional group that belongs to the international network of agencies dedicated to preventing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing. The core of this network is the OECD-based FATF, located in Paris, which issues the 40 Recommendations -the international standards -that all its member countries are required to implement in their national laws. 01. The purpose of this Framework Agreement is to lay down the general basis for collaboration between the Parties involved in areas of common interest. 02. To facilitate this collaboration, the Parties undertake to inform each other about the lines of action identified as priorities in each period, and the activities that will develop them. 03. The Parties agree to develop an annual Action Plan with this Framework Agreement and the priorities identified by each of them for that period as the general basis for collaboration, in which they shall set out the most appropriate form for said collaboration as well as the specific activities they are to perform. Partner: Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.
(2020) 14 (1) e0008 -15/35  strategically monitoring compliance with international conventions, as highlighted by Saraiva (2016), by conducting international insertion assessment that indicates the autonomy of initiatives in relation to the Executive: Theretofore, the MPF had been occasionally invited to attend meetings of international bodies on the subject, usually when some branch of the Executive (especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the CGU or the Ministry of Justice) considered its presence relevant. Starting from 2009, Gurgel Santos (General Prosecutor at the time) began increasing the frequency with which representatives we appointed to OECD, UN and OAS meetings that dealt with anti-corruption conventions. In July 2010, a working group was set up specifically for MPF representation at these bodies, which was to complement the work of the ASCJI. With General Prosecutor Rodrigo Janot taking office in September 2013, the International Legal Cooperation Secretariat (SCI) was created, and place under the responsibility of a member with exclusive dedication to legal cooperation (...). Subsequently, an Executive Group was set up in view of the need for frequent conventions and other international events (SARAIVA, 2016, p. 207).
In the 2010s, two cooperation agreements were made with the NGO Transparency International. The first, more generic, agreement, signed in 2014 related to 'knowledge sharing'. In 2017, the second agreement, which aimed at conducting anti-corruption campaigns with the use of part of the assets recovered in the operations. In particular, the amounts obtained from the fines imposed on companies found guilty of corruption practices. Thus, one can observe that in addition to the circulation of prescriptions from the international space and the establishment of autonomous relationships, funds were also set up to leverage cooperation with international bodies. This connection reveals the MPF's role as formulator and executor of public policy in the distribution of these funds 16 .
These initiatives were accompanied by the creation of nationally anchored actions. In September 2015, the National Council of the Public Prosecution Service (CNPMP) created the National Anti-Corruption Forum (FNCC) 17 . This constitutes a ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 16 On which subject, it is interesting to note the announcement from the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (2019c) that it had created of a foundation responsible for defining the criteria for allocating these funds, and that those coming from its agreement with Petrobras would soon be available. 17 The detailed documents and evaluations of the MPF's cooperation agreements with Transparency International, as well as the initiatives of the National Corruption Forum may be consulted on the institutional website of the National Council of the Public Prosecution Service. 'political' action on the part of the MPF and appears as a centralizing space for discourse circulation. It involves initiatives that transcend the organization's sphere of action and engage with the space of anti-corruption activism. According to its founding document, its objective is "to foment debate and the construction of prevention and repression initiatives within the Brazilian Federal Public Prosecution Service in ten different axes of action" (CONSELHO NACIONAL DO MINISTÉRIO PÚBLICO, 2015). These initiatives include: Transparency and the Law on Access to Information, internal control and the professionalization of the public administration, educational campaigns, training for social control, legislative measures and educational projects.

Table 03. Profiles of links established in international agreements
Connections Commitments -between the Brazilian government and foreign governments -between the Brazilian government and international bodies (OECD, UN and OAS) -between judicial or control institutions (CGU/MPF/Revenue) and counterpart organizations or institutions -between the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office and National Justice Council and Transparency International -commitment to implementing 'measures' to control and combat corruption -commitment to criminalizing corruption in the public sector (transforming it into a criminal matter) -commitment to sharing fiscal and tax data, etc -commitment to combating money laundering and -the sharing of information on this theme commitment to 'anti-corruption' training -training of judges, prosecutors, civil servants, advisory service on the recovery of assets recovered during anti-corruption  Our database also showed that this trend is also present in inter-state trips within Brazil, which is indicative of the proliferation of anti-corruption-linked events.  Mozambique is the African country that appears most frequently.  Geliski (2018) demonstrates the importance of associative cooperation networks in the consolidation of public defender models. 19 The Justice Studies Center of the Americas is an international body under the inter-American system (OAS). It promotes technical assistance from governments and judicial institutions in reforming the justice system in the region. The career of Jaime Arellano Quintana provides a clear illustration of the way legal elites in the anti-corruption system circulate internationally. He is a Chilean lawyer and holds a degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988) and a master's degree in Public Administration and Public Policy (1995)(1996)   There is a significant volume of travel to various UN, UNODC and OECD events. They include the OECD Anti-Corruption Working Group and the

Final considerations
The increase in the international circulation of MPF staff -beyond the group of participants in the international prosecutor cooperation coreshows how the institution has invested in internationalization as a national power strategy. The data show higher circulation than is indicated by the MPF's own documents on cooperation, which corroborates the hypothesis of an international cooperation model that does not pass through the recorded channels of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other regular government channels. As international studies that propose a political sociology of 'anticorruption' movements have shown, it is necessary to consider both national and international priorities to fully grasp the nature of the phenomenon. The diversification of international initiatives is connected with the different political logics that condition their importation into the national power space. These connections are led by agencies, NGOs and technocracies where legal elites play a key role. In some cases, the role of large internationalized law firms interested in changing internal competition rules is greater than that of state agencies -this is more common in the case of the European Union.
Conversely, the Brazilian case represents an example of the appropriation and reworking of these norms by autonomous bureaucracies. In particular, the