1 Introduction

The political behavior of businessmen in Brazil has been a matter of interest since the early days of the Social Sciences in the country. One of the persistent research issues that permeates this literature is political culture, i.e., how businessmen think, evaluate, and position themselves within political processes.Footnote 1 In general, most studies have focused on the analysis of political practices and values within the framework of institutional legality despite the wariness, often found in the common sense, the media, as well as in the academic environment, as to the obscure and illicit nature of the multi-dimensional relationship between businessmen and politics. In recent years, many of the investigations into corruption and other crimes in Brazil have, on the one hand, attracted the attention of Brazilian and foreign researchers to this matter and, on the other hand, have produced several documents and data that have opened new horizons for studies of the business community and politics, allowing for new perspectives on the behavior and ideas of businessmen as well as a novel point of view for the analysis of democratic institutions in Brazil.

As is widely known, Operation Car Wash (OCW) is the most complex and impactful investigation into illegal practices stemming from the relationship between companies and politics in Brazilian history thus far.Footnote 2 Among those investigated were businessmen linked to important construction companies, who, after controversial legal procedures and criminal charges, admitted their involvement in such practices and produced reports pursuant to the investigation. Initially set up to investigate crimes against the financial system by black-market money dealers (known as doleiros in Brazil), OCW evolved to encompass crimes against the public treasury and money laundering, thus revealing a complex scheme involving bribes and illegal financing of politicians from a wide political spectrum, operating at all levels of the Brazilian political system.

The scope and magnitude of issues arising from OCW demands a focused analytical framework. As such, our underlying research question is the representation produced by businessmen linked to Odebrecht and implicated in OCW regarding political financing, more particularly the legal/illegal financing of political campaigns. From this analytical category, we hope to grasp how these businessmen described, analyzed, and evaluated this issue, thus allowing us to verify, from their point of view, not only their relationship with authorities,Footnote 3 politicians, and political parties, but also the inner workings of this fundamental dimension of the democratic political system within a recent period of Brazil’s history. Lastly, the goal is to understand how democracy operated from the standpoint of these businessmen who found themselves in a situation of confessed illegality and in the condition of defendants.

Thus, representation refers not only to a set of normative and prescriptive ideas, values, or propositions, but also to a relevant dimension of the definition and justification behind concrete actions, in this case, the defense of business interests through illegal political financing.Footnote 4 We do not intend to explain the political system from these documents or from the discourse therein found, but rather to verify what they reveal about an important segment of the Brazilian economic elite and their relationship with this crucial dimension of democracy, from their own analysis about their concrete experience, in this case illegal, with politics. Hence the importance of this issue for a Political Sociology of democracy in Brazil.

We shall then briefly describe Operation Car Wash, how Odebrecht was involved in the investigations, and the plea bargain agreement between the Judiciary and Odebrecht executives, given that within this context we find the documents germane to our research object. Subsequently, we present the analytical categories and address the nature and particularities of these documents, explaining the methodological procedures used for analyzing this empirical material. Finally, we analyze the results of the research and conclude with our final considerations.

2 Odebrecht and Operation Car Wash

Without a designated name at the time, Operation Car Wash began in 2009 with the investigation of Federal Deputy José Janene, from the city of Londrina, in the Brazilian state of Paraná.Footnote 5 The police investigation set out to investigate alleged money laundering crimes practiced by the parliamentarian and others involved in the scheme, such as black-market money dealer Alberto Youssef.Footnote 6 The operation was named “Car Wash” because the individuals under investigation used a network of gas stations and jet washers to, according to the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF in the Portuguese acronym), provide a “semblance of legality” to illegally obtained resources.

In July 2013, the investigation wiretapped Carlos Habib Chapter, a black-market money dealer, from which four criminal organizations were identified as well as their leaders, all of them money operators in the parallel exchange market with prior associations to one another: Mr. Chater, Nelma Kodama, Alberto Youssef, and Raul Srour. Each organization was investigated separately and each operation was given a name: Car Wash, Dolce Vita, Bidone, and Casa Blanca, respectively. However, the name “Operation Car Wash” became increasingly popular and was used to refer to any phase of the investigation.

In 2014, the Federal Court of Curitiba, Paraná, launched the first phase of the operation, which implicated black-market money dealers and Paulo Roberto Costa, former Supply Chain Director of Petrobras, who allegedly received a Land Rover Evoque as a donation from Alberto Youssef. According to information from the MPF, on this day “81 search and seizure warrants, 18 pretrial arrest warrants, 10 temporary arrest warrants, and 19 bench warrants were served in 17 cities of 6 states and in the Federal District”.

The information gathered from the plea bargain agreementsFootnote 7 established between the MPF and Paulo Roberto Costa, Alberto Youssef, and other individuals under investigation, revealed that parliamentarians, public agents, companies, and businessmen were allegedly involved in a “major corruption scheme”. Thus, on November 14, 2014, search warrants were executed at several construction companies, among them the Odebrecht Group.Footnote 8 According to the MPF allegations, the Odebrecht Group had established a cartel with other companies in the civil construction sector and defrauded the public bidding system for the construction of major Petrobras units and offices.

We will then provide a brief overview of the plea bargain agreement between the Judiciary and Odebrecht and contextualize the documents comprising our empirical research.Footnote 9

During the 14th phase of OCW, in May 2015, the Federal Police arrested Marcelo Odebrecht and Otávio Marques de Azevedo—presidents of Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, respectively—as well as other construction company executives. In July of that same year, the executives of these companies were charged with organized criminal activities, national and international money laundering, and active and passive corruption. In the 24th phase of OCW, in March of 2016, the Federal Court convicted Marcelo Odebrecht of active corruption, money laundering, and criminal association. In December of 2016, the MPF established leniency agreements with the Odebrecht, in which they pledged to reveal illicit acts practiced with Petrobras.

In the 37th phase of OCW, in January 2017, the president of the Supreme Federal Court (STF, in the Portuguese acronym), Minister Carmen Lúcia, ratified the 77 statements by Odebrecht executives, recognizing the legal validity of these denunciations. In April 2017, in the 39th phase of OCW, minister Edson Fachin, rapporteur of Operation Car Wash in the STF, authorized the Office of the Prosecutor General (PGR in the Portuguese acronym) to investigate 98 politicians, 8 ministers, 3 governors, 24 senators, and 39 federal deputies. The requests were based on the so-called “Janot list” a reference to the Prosecutor General of the Republic at the time, Rodrigo Janot, compiled by statements of former Odebrecht executives under the plea bargain agreements.Footnote 10 Subsequently, Minister Fachin publicly disclosed the content of the recordings in the plea bargain agreements of Odebrecht executives, which were then widely publicized in the press and on the internet.

3 Analytical Categories and Methodological Procedures

On a different occasion, we resorted to some of the analytical categories hereby proposed to analyze the political actions of businessmen.Footnote 11 Below, we indicate how they were appropriate to the objectives of this chapter. As we have shown above, the notion of representation does not refer to political representation, but rather to how agents describe, analyze, and evaluate the situations they experience and upon which they act as a member of a group or institution. Our goal is to grasp the “insider perspective” as found in the discourses of businessmen involved in OCW, to approach action through the actors’ own descriptions and justifications and verify what was effectively collective in this representation and locate the frameworks of tacit, explicit, accepted, and shared knowledge.Footnote 12

Therefore, this analytical category aims to verify how the actors described, characterized, and evaluated the events, processes, institutions, characters, and themselves as well as the justification for their actions. The representation under study here, as well as the corresponding action, refer to the Odebrecht executives involved in OCW as much as to politics and the functioning of democracy, more particularly political financing. We grounded this analysis from three other analytical categories which implicate three different dimensions of this same representation: (1) management culture of the company, (2) institutional format, and (3) political culture.

The representation about the management culture of the company refers to the principles, guidelines, criteria, and values in the discourse of businessmen as to how the company internally managed illegal practices related to political financing. Therefore, most references to management culture also reference the action of the company itself, i.e., what it did.

The notion of institutional format aims to locate the representation of the institutional dimension and the internal organizational particularities established by Odebrecht to manage and account for external issues and challenges. The representation of Odebrecht executives about the institutional format is relevant as it concerns the internal actions of the organization, taken to address its relationship with a specific dimension of the political regime, in this case political financing, which in turn became a significant part of its strategy to defend its interests.

In turn, political culture refers to the way businessmen describe, analyze, and evaluate politics, the decision-making process and the political system, and its institutions and actors, including themselves. The objective is to verify how they view forms of legal and illegal political financing as part of the management culture of the company concerned with the defense of their interests within the scope of political authorities and institutions. This allows us to analyze how these business executives considered and reflected upon the functioning of democracy in Brazil, specifically from the standpoint of our research issue, i.e., political financing.

In short, we stem from a single set of statements, ideas, and opinions from which we outline the representation expressed by the deponents in the documents comprising our research object, albeit analyzed from a conceptual framework within our objectives in this chapter. Finally, it is important to understand how businessmen represent how democracy works, particularly when they undertake illegal practices. Despite having some diagnoses and evaluations, and even sources of information available to ordinary people, businessmen experience politics as well as corruption in different ways because they are part of an elite (Paz & Costa, 2016). Additionally, their ideas and behaviors have different impacts on reality. As underscored by Claus Offe, “owners, managers, and representatives associated with capital…” have “…the ability to define reality in a highly consequential way, in such a manner that what is perceived by them as ‘real’ may have a very real impact on other classes and other political actors” (OFFE, 1984) (emphasis added).

4 Nature and Particularities of Our Research Object

As we have seen, our research object consists of documents produced within the dynamics and objectives of justice operators, such as individuals responsible for the investigations, the prosecutors, the judge and defense lawyers, and the interests of the deponents themselves. Our investigation of this empirical material began with a documentary analysis (Cellard, 2008). Secondly, we considered the constraints posed upon Odebrecht executives within the context of the production of the analyzed documents. Therefore, we weighed the fact that the defendants’ situation and their commitment to tell the “truth, nothing but the truth”, as a condition for maintaining the plea bargain agreement, are part of the circumstances in which such documents were produced.Footnote 13

Thirdly, there is the obvious fact that such constraints do not allow us to consider the statements contained in these documents as “true” or free from contradictions, inconsistencies, incompleteness, and alterations. As an example, we quote an excerpt from Cláudio Melo Filho’s statement, former Institutional Relations Manager at Odebrecht: “First of all, I’d like to clarify that I bring forth fully redone and revised reports, which resulted from substantial efforts to detail and recover facts and data. I also bring relevant facts to your attention, which I know may be relevant sources to develop new lines of inquiry. I am fully convinced that, with my reports, I will clarify the pragmatic manner by which politics worked behind the scenes in the National Congress” (D9).Footnote 14

In one of his statements, Marcelo Odebrecht provided an interesting characterization of the discourse hereby analyzed. Marcelo argued that the judiciary should bear in mind that other deponents could commit “errors, omissions, lies, obstructions”, and therefore such statements could be “flawed” since “they did not provide elucidative information”. To conclude, Marcelo Odebrecht declared that he hoped to bring forth “elucidative” information, while “trying, within my possibilities, to go beyond what (…) I knew at the time to help clarify all these illicit acts. And I think it is important, Your Honor, and I’m saying this to everyone, people need to turn over a new leaf, that is, upon leaving an environment of defense towards an environment of collaboration (…) they need to be committed to the truth, and often, by not acknowledging their responsibilities, they make it difficult to identify the facts.” Thus, he positions himself as having “turned over a new leaf” to the condition of collaborator, that is, not exempting himself and striving to present novel and “elucidative” information (D5).

In the same vein, in another testimony Marcelo Odebrecht declared to the judge:

“I ask (...) that you do not to interpret me. As a collaborator (...) people sometimes find it odd (...) that I constantly try to clarify things. But that’s because I’m pursuing an optimal adherence to the reality of the facts, to the actual truth. And so many times I try to clarify facts which in the legal complaint are not in harmony with how I see the reality of past events. I acknowledge that, and not only do I acknowledge it, but from my experience with this criminal lawsuit people were not trying to elucidate facts. And that’s what I’m going to try to do, even if unbeknownst to me at the time, I’m going to delve deeper and that’s what I’m trying to do in my statements to the Federal Police and the Public Prosecution Service, not only now but also at other moments. I hope to elucidate and identify possible illegalities, as I have already identified in this lawsuit. I think there are omissions, I think there are lies, I’m trying to clarify this with the Federal Police and with the Federal Prosecution Service. And I’ll strive to be even more effective than when seeking information that I believed other collaborators would provide, and unfortunately from what I gathered in this criminal lawsuit, they are not doing so. And so I’m offering myself to (...) go beyond my initial collaboration and promote greater effectiveness to the company’s entire collaboration.” (D7).

For our analytical category of representation, as described above, the procedures are more relevant than the actual veracity or the pretended “optimal adherence to the reality of the facts”, given that this reality is unlikely to be located and precisely defined. In short, we seek to interpret the individual subject. In one of the documents, Marcelo Odebrecht refers to what we understand by representation when referring to the “…way we rationalized” (D5). That is, the objective of this analytical category is to verify how the actors described, characterized, and evaluated events, processes, institutions, characters, etc. This is significant as it relates with the explanation and justification of his actions, in this case his relationship with politics. This is the path through which we hope to comprehend how he and other Odebrecht executives described the workings of illegal political financing, in which they acted as important business executives and important political actors.

We find in the excerpt above the external constraints and the internal aspirations to tell the “truth”, to contribute to the investigations, and to report the events on behalf of the Odebrecht executives. While we must bear in mind that his answers follow the strategies of defense lawyers to reduce culpability, there is an assumed effort and commitment to detail procedures and actions, not least because the plea bargain agreement was conditional on his and any other collaborator´s provision of information to operators. This is the element we seek in these testimonies. After all, calculations also exist whenever individuals participate in interviews and surveys, but constraints of this nature do not.

That being said, our interest lies not in a reliable description of how these facts and events unfolded, nor in the “truth” as it interests investigators and judges, nor even in the public opinion and the press. We understand that these testimonies allow us to verify the representation pertaining to political financing as constructed by business executives who, before justice operators, acknowledged that they undertook illegal practices within this political dimension. We therefore seek sociological validity, and not the “truth” or legal validity, although our analytical purpose benefits from the particularities of the conditions in which the deponents found themselves. We sought this validity in discourses unlikely to be produced under other research conditions, given their core content, i.e., illegal practices, and from which we can analyze, in a very particular and unique way, the relationship between businessmen and politics.

5 Methodological Procedures

The research sought to locate the Odebrecht business executives who held prominent positions in the company’s top management and who were simultaneously entangled in government relations, more particularly, political financing. Our verification confirmed the central role played by the then chairman of the holding company and descendent of the founders, Marcelo Odebrecht. According to the particularities of these documents, our analytical cohort of the other executives followed a logic akin to “snowball sampling”, a technique used in questionnaire-based surveys, namely the mention and attribution that the deponents themselves made to each other, with particular emphasis to Marcelo Odebrecht.Footnote 15 The list of business executives whose testimonies we addressed in this chapter, as well as information regarding their offices, are summarized in Appendix I.

As shown above, the empirical material used in our research stems from a set of documents relating to the plea bargain agreements of Odebrecht executives. We collected these documents in the complex and intricate information system of the Brazilian Federal Court, mostly by consulting the electronic case files available in the online system of the Federal Court of the 9th Region.Footnote 16 These documents refer to different litigations between the years 2015 and 2017, as seen in Appendix II. Our analytical selection was based on the presence of information germane to the objectives of our research and processed through the methodological procedures of content analysis, with the use of an appropriate software for this type of research.

We codified the documents according to the abovementioned analytical categories and the objectives of this chapter. We also resorted to Marcelo Odebrecht’s declarations from Electoral Court documents produced during the trials dealing with the financing of the 2014 presidential campaigns, given the convergence of their contents with our research to complement and compare them with the findings obtained in the OCW documents.

We were cognizant of the accuracy of the sources and methodological procedures for verifying the documentary analysis: on the one hand we were attentive to the adequacy of this empirical material to our research objectives and analytical categories, while on the other hand we verified the reliability of our analyses by cross comparing the codifications of the documents. All these steps were carried out and executed exclusively by the authors.Footnote 17 Finally, as noted above, we numbered the cited documents to facilitate their use throughout the text, as identified in Appendix II of this chapter.

6 Odebrecht and Illegal Political Financing: Analysis of the Results

We present below our main research findings based on our research problem and the analytical categories detailed above, namely, the company’s management culture, institutional format, and political culture, all related to illegal political financing.

6.1 A representation of the company’s management culture

As previously mentioned, according to Marcelo Odebrecht, since the late 1980s the company made undisclosed payments to politicians and political parties, the so-called slush fund, but this management culture changed in the 1990s when the company stopped using false invoices and fictitious contracts and began separating resources from undisclosed payments (D1).Footnote 18 It is worth mentioning that Marcelo himself alludes to this change in the administrative management of the company, and his statements will be fundamental to address the representation about the management culture of the company regarding illegal practices (D1). We detail below our most important findings for the purposes of this chapter.

A first characteristic is the effort to differentiate slush fund from “bribe” as found in the statements addressing undisclosed payments to political authorities and parties.Footnote 19 This distinction was possibly an attempt from the defense’s legal strategy to characterize the company’s illegal political financing practices as a slush fund, a less serious and less precise offense than the crime of active corruption, as is the case of bribes involving public agents or political authorities. Nonetheless. Marcelo Odebrecht’s statements reveal something more complex and interesting for our purposes.Footnote 20

Marcelo Odebrecht characterized “bribes” as resources paid directly to individuals, without any connection to the company’s agenda or interests (D1). Thus, a bribe would be the private appropriation of a resource, legal or illegal, donated by the company. Although Marcelo openly admitted that the group had paid bribes to politicians and parties, he insisted that they differ from slush funds (D3). According to him, slush funds would be a “natural” contribution to political parties and electoral campaigns without any ties to a “specific compensation”, as with the “bribe” (D2), even if he acknowledged that the practice is an “electoral illegality” as it impacts electoral disputes. According to Marcelo Odebrecht, despite “wrongful” there would be a distinction between illegal campaign financing and payment of “bribes”—that is between paying to have “political support” and “paying the person directly” (D5).

Marcelo Odebrecht also expressed the concern that since bribes are easier to trace—as was the case in the OCW investigations—they could harm and compromise other “undisclosed payments” within the agenda of the company’s interests, and thus in turn compromise and “contaminate” this agenda. Furthermore, bribes would have an impact on the management of payments, listed among the reasons why Marcelo personally coordinated the financing of presidential campaigns (D1).

Marcelo Odebrecht refers to an institutional and effectively political dimension in the use of slush funds, that is, the pursuit for “political support” targeted institutional figures, a political party or an important politician, or even the Federal administration. Such practice was not a mere personal act even if, as we will see below, it was based on personal trust. Thus, while acknowledging the “wrongful” (D7) and illegal content of the practice, he also saw it as a way to safeguard business interests, just like any other interest within legal boundaries.

With this line of reasoning, Marcelo Odebrecht attempts to place himself in the position of someone who had a “broad agenda” related to the interests of the company, of the sector, or even of other sectors, albeit never clearly defining this “broad agenda” and how it diverged from “specific projects”. And although he mentions his protagonist role as a supplier of “credit”, he does not detail what he expected out of this, that is, what this “agenda” comprised. The relationship of illegality with the government is thus naturalized, and it would be up to the businessman to establish a procedure, in this case a line of credit, to a representative of the party in government, who, according to Marcelo, was inadvertently the same middleman for the legal and illegal financing of the political party campaign. The relationship of illegality with the government is thus naturalized. In this case, it would be up to the businessman to establish a procedure, a line of credit, to a representative of the President of the Republic’s political party. We will return to this matter later.

Thus, the procedure consisted of assigning a monetary value and allowing government party leaderships to decide on what and how much to spend. In this “monetization” of a political relationship, an expression used by Marcelo Odebrecht, after establishing a value, the company made it available, politicians used it as they pleased, and the corporate demands would supposedly be, if not complied, at least more thoughtfully considered by the competent authorities. Marcelo states that, following his father’s guidelines, he only controlled the use of credit to preserve the “relationship” and encourage the receiving end of the credit line to treat him “more thoughtfully” (D5).

Another dimension within this distinction between bribes and slush funds illustrates and corresponds to the company’s management culture, that is, between the “specific compensation” and the “broad agenda” of the company’s interests. The idea of a “specific compensation” was not only associated with bribes, but also with a “specific agenda” as in Marcelo Odebrecht’s statements regarding the “Refill Crisis” and a line of credit in 2009 (D1, D3, and D7).Footnote 21

According to Marcelo, the payments related to the “Refill Crisis” was a legal settlement from a set of compensations agreed between the company and the government, which were “contaminated” by other illegal financing activities. And Marcelo declares that, despite having regretted paying these two government procedures, which would not correct his mistake, they were a way to defend the “legitimate interest of the sector, of the company”, and had not caused any drain to the public purse, but which, still according to him, was in no way an attempt to justify his actions. Finally, in his understanding this was a successful action, or at least a “reasonable” one, involving both legal and illegal payments (D1).

In turn, the idea of a “broad agenda” emerges as an attempt to present illicit political campaign financing as a legal activity for safeguarding a “broader” set of legitimate interests, even if through an illicit activity. Marcelo Odebrecht describes the “broad agenda” as a domain of the Finance Ministers during the Lula and Dilma presidential administrations, and which concerned the interests of other companies such as Vale, Itaú, and Unica as they sought to benefit from Marcelo’s relationship with the federal government and asked him to relay their demands, which cost him many hours of negotiation with the Ministers (D5).

Thus, Marcelo Odebrecht’s relationship with the federal government, which involved prior confessed illegalities, especially slush funds, would have paved the way for forwarding demands from other companies. In this regard, he did not see this practice as an illegality, but rather an approach with the government which also served as a representation channel for supposedly legal interests of other companies in other sectors. Ultimately, Marcelo became an important representative for the business elite and took on this task, even if it gave him a lot of work.Footnote 22 Whether or not a defense strategy, Marcelo sought to place his relationship with the government as a “broad relationship with all sectors” which he did not associate with any illegality, quite the contrary, he saw it as praiseworthy due to the wide-ranging agenda and his personal dedication.Footnote 23 And even when acknowledging past illegal payments, he claims that if “electoral illegality” did exist, it mostly referred to the source of financing than its use (D7).

According to Marcelo, Antonio Palocci, then Minister of Finance, had agreed not to “discuss specific projects” and to annul requests from other party members. Hence, Marcelo was not particularly worried about “expenditures” as he had already established the line of “credit”: “It was as if the account belonged to them”. The “illegitimacy” or “illegality” of this relationship between Palocci/PT/federal government would lie in “the definition of credit” (D7).

In short, we find Marcelo Odebrecht’s efforts to characterize certain “specific compensations” and the “broad agenda” as the defense of legitimate interests, not only of the company, but also of the construction sector, and that the public purse was untainted. This behavior is very similar to the legal and explicit actions of businessmen in the pursuit of their interests, that is, by alleging a diffuse and legitimate interest, even when there is an explicit private and often exclusive dimension.

Furthermore, Marcelo’s efforts to distinguish slush funds from bribes, without denying that Odebrecht resorted to these practices, reinforces the idea that the company sought to react and promote readjustments in the management culture of illegal practices insofar as new facts emerged. Secondly, the resort to the idea that the slush fund is natural and inexorable resembles the findings of Paz and Costa, who analyzed businessmen who were free and under no legal charges or suspicion, but who acknowledged the possibility of an illegal practice, even if they condemned it morally, justifying their actions under management, cultural, or even customary reasons as to how corruption works in Brazil (Paz & Costa, 2016).

A third aspect of the company’s management culture is the relationship between centralization and decentralization of the management of illegal activities, both of which stemming from Odebrecht’s intense relationship with the federal government, at the time under the Workers’ Party administration (from the Portuguese, Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). Centralization was a twofold movement: on the one hand, as we saw above, a “checking account” was created with a “limit”, that is, an amount previously agreed upon with the Finance Ministers.Footnote 24 On the other hand, a fund collection was set up with the group’s executives to compose this “account” while Marcelo controlled the use of this fund by the party representatives. According to him, the legal part of this amount was divided between the official contribution to the party and the political campaign to “minimize the impact” of the contribution. Conversely, the use of the illegal amount was agreed upon between Marcelo and the Ministers. With this procedure, Marcelo hoped to avoid excessive “expectations” or a “delicate situation” with politicians and avoid pressure upon him or having to think about how and where the resource was used (D1 and D3).Footnote 25

Centralization coexisted alongside managerial decentralization. While Marcelo focused on presidential elections and the relationship with the federal government, the group’s executives had autonomy in their relationships with politicians at the municipal, state, or federal level. According to Marcelo, Cláudio Melo Filho handled relations with the National Congress and the group’s companies that would eventually be favored by the political maneuvers articulated by Cláudio Filho. Subsequently, such companies would assume campaign financing expenses, legal or illegal, arising from such agreements (D1). “Decentralization”, which Pedro Novis sometimes referred to as “planned commission” (D12), also meant a fragmentation of the financial “limits” that each group company had for campaign financing (D2) and the financial amount raised for illegal activities (D4).

When asked about the meaning of the expression “Leaking campaign donations” found in one of the documents seized by the Federal Police, Marcelo Odebrecht declared that his goal was to follow the “Group culture (…) based on the planned commission and decentralization” (emphasis added), meaning donations would be fragmented by the group’s companies, but once the news related to OCW came to light, he decided to “proactively” (sic) disclose the values donated, legally, by the companies in hopes to “avoid certain implications” (D1).

While Marcelo Odebrecht mediated some arrangements with companies regarding presidential campaign financing, such companies were free to compose further agreements with politicians who defended their particular interests. Therefore, the CEO of the group managed the illegal and legal political campaign financing of the main federal executive authority, the President of the Republic, not limited to a specific party or president in office, but encompassing different presidential candidates (D1).Footnote 26

In short, centralization and decentralization serve as another example of the rationalization behind fundraising and the use of resources for illegal political financing which characterizes the company’s management culture for illegal expenditures, marked by the division of responsibilities in the pursuit of resources for payments within the interests of each company. This occurred for both legal and illegal forms of political and campaign financing, the former deliberately disclosed and presented to the press, while the latter evidently only came to light after the disclosure, or eventual leaks, of the testimonies derived from the OCW investigations and litigations and their subsequent developments.

To conclude, we mention a few other dimensions of the company’s management culture. Emilio Odebrecht, former president of Odebrecht and Marcelo’s father, declared that he instructed Marcelo and Pedro Novis to observe “three vectors” when donating to political parties: “avoid discrepant (values) among parties, (…) negotiate to the maximum” and make payments “stretched out over the longest possible period of time” (D14). Marcelo Odebrecht informed that the group also paid for political campaigns in other countries and that other group executives were perhaps less worried about his warnings about potential “contamination” as the campaigns were not in Brazil.

Another interesting aspect were the different ways for routing illegal financing. Companies contributed through cross donations, i.e., a company from one state could not justify donations to a politician from another state, so it would ask a different company to do it and later reimburse them. Marcelo was aware of this but said: “I never got involved”. Alternatively, payments were sent to campaign marketers, such as João Santana (D3). Another strategy involved donations, both legal and illegal, to coalition parties led by the government party, in this case the Worker’s Party (PT), and to election campaigns for different offices (D3).

Trust was another vital element of the company’s management culture, which is not surprising given the nature of illegal political financing. Marcelo Odebrecht indicated this was an important element in the relationship between the company and the politicians as well as with other companies that provided services to political parties which Odebrecht also illegally financed. Marcelo referenced Hilberto Silva’s “historical” trust in political publicist João Santana, a well-connected individual who represented the interests of the Worker’s Party (PT) and its representatives alongside Odebrecht (D1 and D3).Footnote 27 Pedro Novis also expressed the importance of trust when describing his relationship with “Dr. Palocci” as being “… personal, very close” (D12).

Although such representatives were Ministers, their role in the relationship was primarily as party emissaries holding top-level government offices. This was not a direct relationship between the company and Ministers, but rather related to the office that Mr. Palocci and Mr. Mantega held in government. The same occurred, for example, in the case of the “Refill Crisis”. Thus, the relationship of trust entailed a personal agreement and/or settlement, ascertained through a relationship of expected behaviors from each side, rather than agreed upon in a formal contract.

Another interesting aspect is the existence of the “internal godfather”, i.e., people within the company responsible for contacts with a specific politician. For example, Emílio Odebrecht would be the “godfather” for former President Lula, and Marcelo for former Senator Aécio Neves as well as presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, who died in 2014 (D5). Marcelo Odebrecht described the relationship between ministerial and state company offices and political parties: such offices, when “not technically appointed”, would be “divided” by the political parties and designated to their “political godparents,” in other words “every office had a political godfather.”Footnote 28 The “act of becoming a godfather” referred to a relationship of knowledge and proximity between company executives and politicians: “within Congress, each politician had a godfather, and nothing was agreed upon about any given person, even if related to another business or whether by another business, if not aligned with and communicated to this internal godfather: this was our own internal procedure” (D5 and D7).

In sum, for Odebrecht the most common form of undisclosed payments was the slush fund. This method was appealing as politicians would not raise questions about contributions to other politicians, since official donations are public information (D3). Marcelo Odebrecht admitted that the company, “unfortunately” regarded the slush fund as something “natural” and as a “donation” and, consequently, there would be no “illegality” in this activity. When Marcelo argues in his testimony that he would be “rationalizing how we rationalized” (D3 and D7), he references, simply and bluntly, the representation category, that is, how someone describes their own actions, how things operated, and his own assessment regarding the management culture of the company regarding illegal political financing.

6.2 The representation of the institutional format

As we have shown above, the particularities of the company’s management culture refer to how the Odebrecht company internally managed its relationship with illegal financing, which impacted the institutional dimensions and the organizational particularities regarding this matter within the company. Thus, one of the main aspects in the representation about the institutional format lies in references to the company’s “Structured Operations Sector”, the name given to the sector responsible for the control and execution of illegal payments, especially political financing, which attracted a lot of attention from justice operators as well as the national and international media.

Marcelo Odebrecht initially denied the existence of such a “Sector” (D1). He later stated that it had been created in 1993 unbeknownst to him and other company executives. Marcelo declared that he only became aware of this sector after his arrest and the company’s leniency agreement. But he acknowledged that this was a widespread procedure among Odebrecht executives for managing information regarding “undisclosed payments” (D3). Subsequently, he acknowledged that since 1980 there had been a “team”, but not a “sector”, responsible for these payments and for supporting the group’s business executives (D5 and D7), and that such payments were destined to financing political campaigns (D2).Footnote 29 Pedro Novis, Marcelo’s predecessor in the presidency of the Odebrecht Group, explains in a statement that the structure created for “tax planning” had eventually become a mechanism for “paying public officials” (D12).

At any rate, Marcelo Odebrecht reported that, in 2006, Hilberto Silva suggested to change the name to “Structured Operations Team” since this was the denomination “given to financing operations with specific guarantees, and it would be way to support all businessmen without people suspecting that we were making undisclosed payments” (D5 and D7).

An important tool in the operationalization of illegal payments was called MyWebDay, a software which, according to Marcelo Odebrecht, was an improvement envisaged after the “Budget Scandal” (D5).Footnote 30 This same information is found in the testimony of Cláudio Melo Filho (D9). The goal would be to avoid, on the one hand, undisclosed payments through fictitious contracts and, on the other, “to create a process where (sic) generation was separate from distribution”. In all types of undisclosed payments stemming from “commitments” acquiesced by 200 to 300 businessmen of the group, including “bribes”, a person from the company’s financial sector became responsible for sending the information to the “undisclosed payments team”, coordinated by Hilberto Silva, since, although unaccounted for, the payment “had to be managerially allocated to the cost of that project” (D5).Footnote 31 Hilberto explained, in one of his statements, that he adapted the official system of the federal treasury and the company’s prospective payment system, to “systematize and organize the records” (D15).

This was not a mere bookkeeping, but a thorough rationalization of the resources used for each “project”, an expression used to refer to each undisclosed payment akin to, we may presume, when managing the legal version of these “projects”. This system allegedly remained operational until 2004, when Marcelo, then President of the Construction Company Odebrecht, decided to centralize this process around a single individual as he believed there were too many people involved. This person would have a spreadsheet and exclusively manage payments, checking whether there was “positive balance” and enabling payments to the “Structured Operations Team” with a nickname for each recipient (D5).Footnote 32

Thus, here lies a significant example of the procedures adopted in the defense of the company’s interests which, on the one hand, stemmed from the management culture of the company, and, on the other, revealed an effort towards rationalization, professionalization, and institutional improvement, both for legal and illegal financing practices, which transpired in an articulated and organized method. We find here more concern with the administrative and financial management of illegal payments than with the possibility of public exposure.

These statements also reveal that the managerial activities of the holding president, in this case the CEO, included the administration of fundraising and illegal payments within the company’s relationship with politics, as he had to supervise the organizational and institutional dimensions of the company and promote changes and solutions to problems emerging in the previous forms of this same practice, not least because there is no training course or graduate education for such activity.

In short, we are less interested in addressing Marcelo Odebrecht’s natural inconsistencies, not least because he was in a condition previously unattained by anyone of his business and political standing, than we are in rationalizing and covering the illegal practices found in the managerial and administrative procedures typical of a large company. Rationalization and professionalization also appear in the statements by Cláudio Melo Filho, when he declares that the political monitoring system was internally elaborate and well-structured through the formation of a qualified team and the definition of agendas of interest, as well as by monitoring the behavior of politicians within the National Congress. Furthermore, there was a protocol of sorts, with well-established steps for monitoring the legislative process and the use of the Drousys system by the “Structured Operations Sector” (D9).Footnote 33

The representation about the institutional format suggests a combination of: 1—striving for efficiency, managerial gains, and rational business management, for which these businessmen had studied and amassed professional experience; 2—perfecting ways for tackling challenges inherent to the political game; 3—acknowledging the conditions imposed by the admitted criminal nature of the practices concerning illegal political financing. This suggests that the economic power and managerial sophistication of large companies may favor rationalization and optimization when managing not only normal and legal business, but also illegal activities, which were just as common.

Lastly, the company’s efforts reported in the representation about the institutional format reveals that the management of illegal payments reacted and learned from events of the political world, as indicated by the reference to the “Budget Scandal”. In other words, adjustments to the institutional format took place not only between the individual and the company, a dimension analyzed by Pohlmann and others (Pohlmann et al., 2016), but also as a consequence of the dynamics of the political system and the practice of illegal political financing.

6.3 The representation and political culture of Odebrecht

Regarding the political culture of Odebrecht and its illegal practices, a first pillar of how these businessmen represented politics is the characterization of illegal corporate political financing. On the one hand, Marcelo Odebrecht claimed that “every public notice has an owner”, as defined by the capacity of a given company to shape the public notice according to their interests together with a public authority, an ongoing and recurrent practice for the past 30 or 40 years (D7). Such was the relationship of the contractors with government authorities. The “trust” between businessman and politician, as discussed above, comprised a “tripod” together with the company’s ability to deliver the public construction work desired by the politician as well as the financial support to the politician’s project.Footnote 34 According to Marcelo, this would happen across many different economic sectors, upon which he concluded that a “relationship grounded exclusively on money” just as a relationship “exclusively comprised of good projects, good investments” would not work, because the politician had the “expectation” to receive money for his political project, or to use it as a pretext to ask for financial support (D7). In the words of Pedro Novis, these would be “extra-accounting (…) requirements” (D12).

As we have shown above, even though he admitted that slush funds contained an “electoral illegality”, Marcelo Odebrecht tried to differentiate it from “bribes”. One of the arguments behind this differentiation also referred to the particularities of the political system. First, he claimed that 3/4 of election spending in all campaigns in the country is undeclared. Secondly, the parties themselves as well as the candidates requested slush funds, as they did not want to reveal all their expenditures to the Electoral Court. And thirdly, as we saw above, the companies also preferred slush funds so as not to publicly reveal the amount donated to each candidate. If a company legally donates to a party, another party, or even the same party from a different region in the country, could ask for money. In the words of Emilio Odebrecht, they had to find ways to circumvent “jealousy and problems” with political parties (D14). Finally, Marcelo concluded that, if the company had a privileged relationship with a politician, this was by virtue of a major donation through a slush fund (D1).

This is an important characteristic of Odebrecht’s representation of the political system. On the one hand, how the CEO and other senior figures of the Odebrecht holding described corporate political financing. On the other hand, the way they positioned themselves or saw themselves as passive agents for politicians to fulfill their requests and demands, even though admitting that this relationship also interested their company. This cannot be reduced to a mere attempt to justify illegal activities, not least because they were ultimately confessed in Court.

This representation reinforces the idea that this was how these businessmen described not only themselves, but the entire business community in the country within the political process. Furthermore, Marcelo Odebrecht stated that “he felt used by the government” and the outcome of this political relationship would be detrimental to his person and his business position, because, as he himself argued, these activities resulted from problems that the government itself created. Finally, even though he accepted the idea of being an “ambassador” to business interests, an expression used by the Electoral Court judge, he stated that he really felt “used” (D3).

According to Marcelo Odebrecht, politicians would not honor agreements and promises, furthermore, they would create constraints that forced him to “plea” like “a beggar” for things the government requested the company. Marcelo attributed his efforts to solve problems to his “spirit to serve” the company, which he believed had been misinterpreted by the Federal Prosecution Service. And when asked by a judge if he felt like the “owner of the government,” he replied that he saw himself as a “beggar”: “Deep down, I was not the owner of the government, I was the government’s sucker” (D3). Interestingly, a similar discourse is commonly found among ordinary Brazilian citizens regarding the political class.

In our understand, this representation means more than simply trying come off as a victim of the government and politicians. It refers to the way these businessmen thought and acted in relation to politics, politicians, and political institutions. As much as this was part of the defense strategy, it is also a justification for the passivity and inertia in the face of institutional forms, both legal and illegal, of the political system, in this case the particularities of illegal corporate political donations.

Bruno Carazza (Carazza, 2018) addressed some aspects of what we call the representation of Odebrecht, defining it as the company’s “internal donations policy”. However, we understand that this dimension cannot be analyzed as mere “pragmatism” or “lack of ideological criteria” as he does, since, on the one hand, we would need a precise definition of “pragmatism” and, on the other hand, analyze the agent’s behavior from a normative criterion against such “ideological criteria”, especially since the Odebrecht executives themselves claimed that this was a recurrent practice for the past 30 or 40 years. Be it as it may, Marcelo Odebrecht described the company’s behavior, as well as his own, by characterizing and distinguishing “bribes”, “specific interests”, “broad agenda”, “fluid agenda” etc., and assigning at least some of the blame to Brazil’s political culture and system.

Emílio Odebrecht adopted a similar discourse, saying he advised his executives against bringing “problems of the organization”, but rather “solutions to the country’s problems”, arguing that “companies have a duty to contribute to solving the shortcomings” of the country. However, he also declared that the executives would bring “their own problems” and that he was “aware of” future donations, suggesting that he knew about them (D13).

We find other interesting characteristics of the company’s political culture regarding illegal activities. Marcelo Odebrecht expressed discomfort and criticism in his relationship with the PT administrations due to the intersection between the party’s fundraiser and the Ministers with whom he and other businessmen addressed their demands, referring more specifically to Antonio Palocci and Guido Mantega. Thus, there would be a direct relationship between fulfilling or considering these demands and the prospect of political funding. As we have seen, he described this dynamic as a “fluid agenda”, since the interlocutor receiving the demand was also the fundraiser for the government party (D7). Thus, the problem would emerge in the resolve and primacy of the fundraiser’s expectations when meeting these demands as a Minister. For Marcelo Odebrecht, these demands had to be considered and preferably accepted, without the need for a counterpart in political, legal, and illegal financing, even more so when dealing with the “broad agenda”.

In Marcelo’s assessment, this was a “huge mistake” and a “major blunder” of the PT administration, that is, to have finance Ministers as government interlocutors when addressing the “legitimate demands” of business executives. These same Ministers were also responsible for the political campaign fundraising, undermining an important value for him: the separation between these two dimensions. Marcelo claims that he discussed “legitimate issues” with the Ministers, but this relationship would be “skewed by the fact that the person with whom I talked (…) was the same person asking for resources and with whom I negotiated the financial contributions”, a fact that would have contributed to the eventual discovery of the entire scheme (D5).

Marcelo’s description of this situation is particularly interesting, that is, as something supposedly new and devised by the PT administration in contrast to the longstanding relations between businessmen and governments. This means that, for Marcelo, this intersection should not exist in the relationship between businessmen and authorities in a democracy. For Marcelo, the mistake was in how the PT mediated the relationship between campaign financing and meeting the demands of businessmen, and not the relationship itself, which he had naturalized and accepted as legitimate, even if admittedly illegal.

The testimony of Fernando Reis, former President of Odebrecht Ambiental, expressed a different point of view, even though it corroborates Marcelo Odebrecht’s discourse. Fernando declared that campaigns contributions, legal or illegal, were seen by the company as a way to intervene in the electoral process as well as in the candidates’ discourses and proposals, even if it not decisive: “This was done in an erroneous, distorted manner and ultimately caused Odebrecht the problems that it has today”. Odebrecht’s extensive work in the field of investments was seen as a “way to protect” the group’s companies’ interests. Such “exaggeration” would have turned Odebrecht into an “open door for any politician” looking for funding. In addition to the volume of demands, as the company had activities throughout the national territory, the campaign financing system, both legal and illegal, was “geographically spread out” given that the company would have become a “major gateway” for political demands (D11).

According to Fernando Reis, this led to a trivialization and difficulty to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate: “We went deep into this vicious circle”. Donations were made for the purpose of circumventing mayors threatening contract breaches. Thus, they adopted the “concept” of making donations with the “institutional purpose to uphold contractual regularity”: “it was close to absurd”, but it was a way to force the mayor to “comply with the law” and not resort to artifices to breach the contract. In the 2012 municipal elections, Odebrecht´s superintendent directors provided a list of candidates and donations were evenly distributed, to avoid future problems with whoever was elected. However, this did not mean benefits would be guaranteed. Hence, “in an erroneous and distorted manner” the company sought contractual regularity and a way to safeguard their interests (D11).

In short, our intent is not to consider these discourses as an objective, reliable, and thorough account of how things worked, but in addition to converging on the characterization of illegal political funding, the discourses reveal that they were more than just businessmen acting as fragile victims of a political system, as the company clearly enjoyed many of the advantages of this type of relationship with politicians, and only confessed their illegal actions due to external circumstances.Footnote 35 The complexity behind the representation of this process indicates that it cannot be understood as mere “pragmatism”. Moreover, what would be the need or even the possibility of following “ideological criteria”?

What ultimately led them to regret how things worked was not solely their condition of defendants, but also the acknowledgement that this form of defense of their political interests had a cost. Reducing this behavior and point of view to “pragmatism” does not allow us to understand the nuances of its construction as representation and how this allows us to reflect upon concrete actions, cultures, and institutional formats.

Thus, this representation reveals the tendency of businessmen to brush aside the construction and change process in how they engage with politics and decision-making, as well as the lack of a clear project for a political system existing beyond the direct relationship between money and politics, although it is easier to play the victim, the passive actor, or even the “sucker”, when the illegal, very profitable things being done come to light.

The notion of pragmatism could conceal the fact that businessmen acted as they usually do when faced with the complexity of the political game: passively, even more so considering it was a profitable situation for them. This was therefore a choice and points to the limits of the very constitution of businessmen as political actors. When it comes to defining the mechanisms of the political process, when faced with the professionalism of politicians in this field, especially politicians in government, the lack of preparation of businessmen for this dimension of the political game blatantly manifests itself, even if we do not literally commit to Marcelo Odebrecht’s self-definition as a “sucker” or “court jester”.

After all, we cannot analyze these businessmen as merely greedy above all else or simply feigning when they express dissatisfaction with the outcome of these political relations. This seems to be how they dealt with politics and the decision-making process of the State. Furthermore, Marcelo Odebrecht’s figure reveals how difficult it can be for businessmen to act in politics when this relationship extends beyond money and fulfilling demands—the dimension for which they are most prepared—towards the requirements of the political game, for which, as we observed above, there was no training course.

When the Electoral Court questioned the purpose of the electoral contribution payments, Marcelo Odebrecht explicitly spoke of a “culture” that existed since the 1980s and in which he was raised. According to Pedro Novis, this “has been going on since forever” (D12). For Emilio Odebrecht, besides being “a dominant model in the country” (D13), it dated “way back to my father’s days” (D14). When questioned by the Minister, Marcelo argued that it was their relationship with politicians, the political system, and democracy in Brazil. Hence, when politicians supported a bill that could be of interest to the company and the sector, an “expectation” emerged.Footnote 36 And Marcelo saw this behavior by both politicians and businessmen as natural, because it was on the company’s interest to elect someone close to their interests, as it was the politician’s interest to receive the contribution.Footnote 37 This dynamic would be inherent to the existence of the electoral contributions. The problem would lie in the uncontrolled dimension of slush funds, in the “smuggling” of bribes, in the non-legalization of lobby, in how legal contributions work, and the way the press associated campaign financing with potential shady benefits granted to companies. According to Marcelo, Because of the way the press associated campaign financing with potential shady benefits granted to companies, Brazilian society had a different representation as that of business and “criminalized legal campaign financing” (D1).

Marcelo Odebrecht also had a stance regarding the press. According to him, the media would have distorted the legitimacy of safeguarding business interests, that do not necessarily involve “bribes”, and reduced everything to slush funds, which should not always be the case. In other words, this is Marcelo’s interpretation about the problems in the political system, the media, or society’s reactions. The company’s mistake would have been to convert all political financing into slush funds, a choice he justifies due to the “fear of criminalization” of regular campaign financing. Defending interests through clear contributions would be the best thing to do, and by “looking forward” a lot would have to change, hence the importance of OCW according to him (D3).

Marcelo Odebrecht indicated that the relationship between meeting demands and a “political project” (D5) was naturally accepted by the company and regarded as a mere characteristic of the political system. This may sound obvious, but it is interesting when explicitly mentioned by a major businessman, because, at least from a common sense or naive perspective, politics could easily exist without such a relationship. The point here is not to suggest inconsistencies on Marcelo’s discourse, but to emphasize one doubt: “whether requests were prioritized because they were legitimate or because money was involved” (D7).

7 Final Thoughts

Our goal was to present the results of an analysis of the testimonies of Odebrecht executives involved in Operation Car Wash, particularly regarding illegal political financing. For this approach, we used representation as our main category to verify a specific and underexplored dimension of the political culture of businessmen, upon referencing individuals who belong to an important segment of the economic elite, as well as their own political actions—in this case admittedly illegal—in democracy. In addition, we considered that the description, understanding, actions and justification for such actions, and characterization of politics are complex objects even for the actors who produced the representation. Lastly, we identified that the practices reported by the Odebrecht executives refer to what is commonly called grand corruption, as it involved major political characters and institutions and a significant misuse of the public purse for the benefit of a specific and reduced group.Footnote 38

The analysis of the representation of these businessmen regarding illegal political financing indicates a certain homogeneity or a certain sharing, such as, for example, when they sought to characterize the political practice itself and its relationship with the political system as taken for granted, that it could not exist in any other way. This raises the hypothesis that there is a widespread lack of effective interest and attitude on the part of businessmen in changing the political system, despite commonly professed dissatisfactions. Furthermore, both within the legal and illegal scope of corporate actions, there is a tendency to resort to the justification of impotence so as not to engage towards change in how politics operate and their lack of interest in doing so. However, we must also remember that, both legally and illegally, they may have their interests met, even if expressing dissatisfaction, and therefore do not feel motivated to promote changes in the functioning of the political game. Another hypothesis is that, if they ever try to promote such changes, they will have to face, for one thing, their own way of thinking about politics and themselves as political agents.

Despite their differentiated economic and political status, the representation by Odebrecht business executives about political financing does not always differ from what we find within common sense, that is, the idea that politicians only think about resources, legal or illegal, and that political parties are mere machines that superimpose their fundraising and electoral interests over social interests, and that this dynamic would be marked by corruption and influence peddling.

That is not to say that this interpretation is misguided, but rather that it is partial and simplified, such as when we consider the other side of this representation. From business executives’ point of view, agents with great economic power experience illegal political financing in a more realistic and less normative manner, precisely due to this combination between their own condition of major business executives and political activity in defense of the company’s interests within an illegal context, albeit overlapped and articulated by legal forms. From this standpoint, this condition places business executives in experiences and practices that are quite different from the experience of ordinary citizens, the bearers of what we call common sense.

The representation of illegal practices as “natural” and recurrent for the past 30 or 40 years served as a way of justifying them, even more so when before the judiciary, for businessmen sitting as defendants. However, more revealing to us is how this worked perfectly well for the company’s interests, given that it never sought to change this framework of relations with authorities, and only began to consider them an “illegality” or “mistake” when under trial for such practices. This suggests that a rupture with illegal habits in the defense of the company’s interests was only possible through an external and dramatic factor, as was the case of OCW, even if questions and doubts remain regarding the institutional and even legal validity of its methods.

Marcelo Odebrecht stated the law should punish whenever “some illegality” exists, such as “bribes”. The problem would lie in the “agreement”, in the exchange of favors, whether legally or illegally. Therefore, for Marcelo, more important than criminalizing slush funds would be to verify the existence of an “agreement”, which he claimed to have perpetrated only in rare occasions. Therefore, “illegality” would exist only in form, i.e. slush funds, and not in content and substance, i.e. exercising the defense of legitimate corporate interests, the lobby (D1). Therefore, we find not only the articulation between legal and illegal practices, but rather a certain way of considering the promotion of corporate interests of a major company through corporate political financing as it has operated in Brazil since the 1980s.

This representation shows that one of the main traits of this perspective is the fact that the CEO of a major group such as Odebrecht, regardless of his family background, held a position that required, among other things, aptitude to implement and refine a management culture in addition to administrative procedures and illegal institutional practices, on top of negotiating with politicians and managing conflicts between them, while often having diverging interests.

As our interest lies not in legal or moral judgments, it is worth remembering that an act is considered legal or illegal according to the legislation in force in a given society, its desires, and historical context. Many acts may cease to be criminalized or become crimes throughout history. While this does not justify the crimes committed, it may help us understand some of the statements by the businessmen.

Investigations such as OCW, as well as many others still underway in Brazil, do not lead us to believe that enough constraints exist to end such practices, since the testimonies by Odebrecht executives suggest a tendency towards the persistence of illegality as long as it continues to be one of the easiest paths for goal achievement. Therefore, the Odebrecht case suggests that only through a combination of more effective laws and investigative tools and a change in management culture, and especially in the political culture of businessmen when defending their interests, would we see effective long-term results in the fight against political corruption. There is an underlying generational dimension in all this, and ruptures with longstanding practices only occurs by way of a very relevant, dramatic, and external reason.

Lastly, we champion the need to expand this research front of the Political Sociology of democracy in Brazil: to reflect upon about the functioning of democratic institutions from the perspective of relevant social and economic agents, their ideas, their values, and their actions, within and beyond the confines of legality.