Brazil’s corruption investigators want to dig up a ‘dead’ congressman

LIMA, Peru — The suspected mastermind behind Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal may not be dead after all. Investigators say they have evidence he could be alive somewhere in Central America.

Jose Mohamed Janene — a lawmaker blamed in a case that cost Brazilian oil firm Petrobras some $2.1 billion — was thought to have died of heart disease at 55, in 2010. 

Now, authorities believe the death may have been faked. They want to dig up his grave to see if his body is really there.

His widow is livid. Brazil is transfixed. Citizens are blaming President Dilma Rousseff, whose approval rating has plummeted to 9 percent; although she has not been implicated, her party was deeply involved in the Petrobras case. 

Investigators say they have confidential information that Janene stashed money in bank accounts in Central America, and could now be living there.

“There is a strong indication that Jose Janene may be alive,” said Hugo Motta, the head of a congressional committee investigating the racket. “The suspicion, from incoming information, is that he may have faked his death.”

Motta added that it was “very strange” that Janene’s wife had not viewed the corpse. “As a doctor, I can say that when a person dies of a heart attack, it’s very common that the family views the body.” The suspect was said to have died in a Sao Paulo clinic.

“His own widow did not see him die. The coffin was sealed.”

Janene’s widow, Stael Fernanda, has responded furiously, ridiculing the allegations as “absurd” and “political.”

She even dismissed Motta’s claim that her husband, a practicing Muslim, was buried in a coffin, which would have gone against Islamic tradition.

Janene’s possible non-death is just the latest bombshell to rock Brazil, as prosecutors and Motta’s commission probe crooked dealings between government politicians and the upper echelons of Petrobras, said to be the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer. Prosecutors say up to 3 percent of earnings were siphoned off, with bribes going to key figures in the ruling alliance led by the Workers Party of President Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazilian car wash

All this is going on at a time when numerous Latin American governments are convulsing from major corruption scandals — which just got compounded by this week’s stunning busts of leading world soccer executives. In the Petrobras case nicknamed “Operation Car Wash,” Brazilian media have reveled in tales of politicians, oil executives and underground currency traders meeting in luxurious Rio hotels and laundering billions to Swiss banks.

“People are fed up. They think that this is typical,” Leo Torresan, of anti-corruption group Amarribo Brasil, told GlobalPost. “The perception is that if you opened up the black boxes of other companies, such as BNDES [Brazilian Development Bank] or Eletrobras [a public-private power company], you would find the exact same thing.”

When his death was reported, on Sept. 14, 2010, Janene was on a waiting list for a heart transplant. He was also a suspect in a previous scheme in which senior members of ex-President Lula’s inner circle were convicted of buying votes from opposition members of congress.

Janene allegedly died before the Petrobras scandal had broken.

Motta had originally decided to order local authorities to exhume Janene’s body from an Islamic cemetery in his hometown.

But because of the sensitive nature of the move, Motta reversed that order, and decided to give the investigating committee a chance to vote on his request. If the motion’s approved, the mystery should soon come to an end. And if the lawmaker’s remains turn out not to be in his grave, that would likely trigger an international manhunt.