The figure that defines Diálogo Ciudadano's thesis: the distance between the scandal that surfaces and the consequence that actually arrives. Each milestone —complaint, indictment, trial, final conviction, annulment or dismissal— is logged with its date, so that over time one can measure how long accountability takes, or whether it ever comes. The Odebrecht/Lava Jato case, a single continental scandal with radically different outcomes by country, is the natural experiment we start from.
Statistical readings derived from the attributes of each recorded case. All figures come from the documented events; amounts are computed only over cases with a sum expressed in the indicated currency, without converting between currencies.
Choropleth by number of forensically or judicially documented cases. Countries with no verifiable public cases remain in the base colour — the absence of events does not equal the absence of surveillance. Hover or click a coloured country to see the cases.
Five milestones of the Odebrecht / Lava Jato case measure the distance between scandal and consequence: $788 million in admitted bribes, twelve countries implicated and a years-long judicial path in which convictions coexist with annulments.
Diálogo Ciudadano was born of an intuition: between the scandal that erupts and the consequence that arrives there is a gap, and that gap is the true measure of accountability. This tracker documents it with the case that best embodies it in Latin America, Odebrecht / Lava Jato, following milestone by milestone its path from corporate admission to convictions, sanctions and —an uncomfortable fact— setbacks and annulments.
The figures give the scale: $788 million in bribes admitted by the construction firm itself and twelve countries implicated. But the tracker does not stop at the scandal's number; it follows the procedural stage of each milestone, because a first-instance conviction later annulled is not the same as a firm consequence. The gap between what was uncovered and what ultimately held up in court is, precisely, what this record makes visible.
A Lima court sentenced former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) to 20 years and 6 months in prison for collusion and money laundering, after finding him guilty of receiving $35 million from Odebrecht in exchange for the award of the Interoceanic Highway. It marked the first high-profile Lava Jato conviction in Peru. Nearly eight years had passed since the 2016 corporate admission.
Peru's National Superior Court sentenced former president Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and his wife Nadine Heredia to 15 years for money laundering, finding they received campaign funds from Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government. Imprisonment took effect immediately despite an announced appeal. Heredia obtained diplomatic asylum at Brazil's embassy. He is the second Peruvian ex-president jailed in the case.
Odebrecht acknowledged to the US Department of Justice that it had paid bribes across a dozen countries to win public-works contracts. The settlement put the scheme in the hundreds of millions of dollars and triggered investigations across the region. It is the starting point of the natural experiment: one common origin, twelve different outcomes.
The US investigation led to a settlement under which Petrobras agreed to pay $853 million in DOJ and SEC fines, about 80% of which was returned to the Brazilian state. It is an example of effective corporate consequence —in contrast with the slowness of individual consequences in several countries.
Bodies of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court established that much of the testimony from former Odebrecht executives should not be taken into account —not only in Brazil, but with effects on cases in other countries such as Peru. The annulment of evidence illustrates the reverse direction of the gap: progress that is rolled back. The exact date will be refined as documentary tracking is consolidated.
Each event logs a milestone in the life of a high-level alleged-corruption case: the date of the complaint, the indictment, the start of trial, the first-instance conviction, the final conviction, or an annulment or dismissal. The 'etapa' (stage) attribute allows the timeline to be reconstructed and the elapsed time between scandal and consequence to be measured. Editorial honesty: a first-instance conviction is not a final conviction; annulments and acquittals are logged with the same rigor as convictions, because the gap is also measured when the consequence is reversed. The confidence level ('confirmed' = published ruling or official document; 'reported' = recognized journalistic investigation pending document; 'alleged' = complaint without resolution) protects the credibility of the dataset. This is original Diálogo Ciudadano construction, not a third-party figure.