The Globalization of White-Collar Crime and Its Impact on Vulnerable Populations: Brazil’s Operation Car Wash As a Penal Project

Brazilian Operation Car Wash revealed a billionaire scheme involving politicians bribing state officials to favor firms in procurement bids, significantly impacting the country’s politics. But while scholars analyzed in detail the investigation’s political causes, methods, and consequences, few social sciences works have addressed how the investigation impacted the penal field. This paper analyzes the practices and discourses advanced by Car Wash legal prosecutors’ professional project. The paper examines two legislative hearings where Car Wash legal actors defended criminal law reform. The first was a failed attempt by Car Wash prosecutors to propose a globally-inspired white-collar crime bill named the ‘Ten Measures Against Corruption.’ The second, partially successful and dubbed ‘Anti-Crime Package,’ was proposed by former Car Wash’s judge turned into Minister of Justice, focusing both on white-collar and blue-collar crime. I argue that while the Ten Measures bill announced itself as addressing white-collar crime, its practices and discourses were revamped in the “Anti-Crime Package,” a law that sought to increase punishment for all crimes. Despite Car Wash actors’ acknowledgment of criminal justice inequalities to justify harsher punishment for the powerful, I show how their professional project advanced discourses and practices that are not only compatible but also stimulate harsher punishment for blue-collar criminality. By promoting American-inspired penal practices and impunity and efficiency discourses, Car Wash actors’ professional project indirectly fomented harsher punishment to the working-class Black Brazilians, who are the historical target of state punishment. Beyond the Brazilian case, this paper shows how the contemporary globalization of crime control, even against white-collar crime, might increase punitive practices and foment discourses against marginalized and racialized groups.