No Time for Transparency in Brazil
After publicly demanding impartiality and accountability at the STF, Transparency International Brazil has gone a month without answering 12 questions from Lawfare4All about its own institutional record, from Car Wash to the current crisis. Perhaps there was no time. Not even to say there was no time.
Editorial Board ·
It all began with a demand for transparency
On 16 September 2026, Transparency International Brazil published a forceful statement entitled *Julgamento no STF projeta grave risco de impunidade e aprofunda crise institucional* ("STF ruling poses a serious risk of impunity and deepens the institutional crisis").
The document reacted to the turbulent extraordinary session of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) held the previous day, amid the institutional controversy involving Justices Alexandre de Moraes and André Mendonça. The organisation expressed concern about resistance to the investigation, pointed to possible conflicts of interest and criticised the institutional handling of the episode.
It also called for the prompt return of the case by Justice Flávio Dino, who had requested more time to review it, and warned of the worsening institutional crisis and the growing pressure for extraordinary accountability mechanisms, including impeachment proceedings.
The statement closed with an emphatic defence of equality before the law and of the need to ensure that accountability mechanisms also reach those who hold the greatest powers of the Republic.
A legitimate, relevant statement, categorical enough to raise an additional journalistic question: are the criteria of independence, impartiality and institutional responsibility championed by Transparency International applied with the same rigour to the assessment of its own record?
It was in this context that, the next day, 17 September, Lawfare4All sent the executive director of Transparency International Brazil, Bruno Brandão, an invitation to a written interview consisting of 12 questions.
The questionnaire examined the evolution of the organisation's positions between the period of Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the current institutional crisis.
The aim was neither to contest the organisation's right to criticise the Supreme Federal Court nor to anticipate any conclusion about its conduct. The purpose was to understand how the criteria of integrity, impartiality and accountability claimed in that statement also guided a retrospective assessment of the positions taken by the organisation itself.
The invitation came with an express consideration: the interview could be answered entirely in writing, within whatever timeframe Transparency International considered reasonable.
Today, 17 October, marks exactly one month since it was sent.
As of the closing of this article, no response has been received.
The memory of the fight against corruption
Operation Car Wash is an unavoidable chapter in Brazil's recent institutional history. Its effects went beyond the prosecution of corruption crimes and reached the political system, the economy, the relationship between the branches of government and society's very perception of how Justice works.
Transparency International Brazil maintained technical cooperation relations with the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office during that period, the nature of which has already been the subject of public clarifications by the organisation itself.
The existence of those relations does not, in itself, demonstrate any irregularity, conflict of interest or responsibility for the acts of third parties. However, nor does it make journalistic scrutiny of the institutional criteria employed, the assessments produced and the political and legal consequences of that environment irrelevant.
It is legitimate to ask whether the organisation's current understanding of independence, conflicts of interest, selectivity and due process can also be applied retrospectively to Car Wash.
Likewise, it is legitimate to ask whether the organisation recognises significant changes in its approach over the past ten years.
Self-criticism is not a confession of guilt. Institutional review does not amount to delegitimising a record. On the contrary, a willingness to re-examine earlier positions may represent precisely a commitment to the principles of integrity an organisation claims to uphold.
The questionnaire sent by Lawfare4All sought to explore these possibilities without demanding predetermined answers.
Who watches the watchdogs?
There is a little-discussed asymmetry in today's anti-corruption ecosystem.
Organisations specialised in producing diagnoses, indicators and recommendations on public integrity gain legitimacy to assess governments, courts, companies, parliaments and public policies. Their reports influence decisions, reputations and institutional priorities.
This role is legitimate and necessary. But it does not confer immunity from scrutiny and reply.
Transparency cannot function solely as an instrument for overseeing others. Nor should the fight against corruption become a permanent credential of moral authority, capable of exempting its own protagonists from the questions they direct at everyone else.
It is important to distinguish things: a civil society organisation is not subject to the same legal transparency obligations imposed on public administration, nor does it have an unrestricted obligation to answer every journalistic request.
The issue here is a different one: the consistency between the values publicly defended and the willingness to clarify one's own institutional conduct.
Transparency International Brazil may disagree with the premises put forward by Lawfare4All, contest interpretations, offer alternative explanations or simply state that it does not intend to grant the interview.
All of these possibilities are part of the legitimate exercise of the right of reply.
Silence, however, adds a new question to the twelve we sent.
The fight against corruption also needs scrutiny
Lawfare4All does not intend to dispute with Transparency International a monopoly on republican virtues. Not least because, fortunately, neither organisation holds any such monopoly.
We have plenty of work ahead. Not only in examining corruption, but equally in investigating the methods, interests, narratives and consequences produced in the name of fighting it, especially when the discourse of public integrity can be instrumentalised in political, economic and institutional disputes.
Fighting corruption and critically examining the mechanisms used to fight it are not contradictory activities. They are complementary dimensions of the same democratic requirement.
Corruption must be investigated. So must institutional abuse. And organisations that intervene publicly in these debates should not find it inconvenient for their own criteria to be the subject of questions.
An anti-corruption agenda that neglects due process, impartiality, proportionality or the political effects of the instruments it mobilises runs the risk of producing new institutional problems while purporting to solve the old ones.
It is not enough to ask whether a given initiative fights corruption. It is equally necessary to understand how it does so, by what criteria, with what safeguards and under what accountability mechanisms.
This requirement applies to the State, to the justice system, to private organisations and also to those who practise journalism.
Including Lawfare4All.
Perhaps there was no time
We should acknowledge a perfectly reasonable possibility: Transparency International Brazil may simply not have had time to answer our questions.
The message may not have reached the responsible recipient, may have run into some administrative problem, may still be going through internal procedures, or may simply not have found room in the organisation's institutional agenda.
We have no grounds to rule out these hypotheses, nor to assert that the lack of a response stems from a deliberate decision not to reply.
If the original request was not received, we will gladly send it again. If the organisation needs more time, it need only say so. If it disagrees with the questions, even better: we look forward to hearing its arguments.
The right of reply is precisely what makes a journalistic investigation more robust.
It is true that, for an entire month, there was also no time to say there was no time. But we do not intend to turn a possible administrative difficulty into an institutional accusation.
Our journalistic interest is not to obtain Transparency International's silence. It is to obtain its answers.
What we would not like is for the episode to end in a rather peculiar division of labour: Transparency International asking questions of Brazilian institutions, and Lawfare4All investigating why it does not answer ours.
There are more important matters to clarify.
The 12 questions that remain unanswered
Out of commitment to the transparency of our own work, we reproduce in full, without changes, the questions sent to Transparency International Brazil on 17 September 2026.
1. Does Transparency International recognise that anti-corruption and institutional accountability mechanisms can be politically instrumentalised or used selectively?
2. Was this concern with selectivity, impartiality and political instrumentalisation already part, with the same centrality, of TI-Brazil's approach during Car Wash and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016?
3. Does the organisation identify significant changes in its understanding of the relationship between fighting corruption, due process, institutional independence and the protection of democracy over the past decade?
4. Looking back at the Car Wash period, are there positions, assessments or priorities of TI-Brazil that the organisation would formulate differently today?
5. What criteria does Transparency International consider appropriate for distinguishing a legitimate investigation from one that is selective, politically instrumentalised or marked by conflicts of interest?
6. Can the criteria TI uses today to assess conflicts of interest, impartiality and accountability at the STF also be applied retrospectively to the conduct of the authorities and institutions involved in Car Wash?
7. During the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, TI criticised aspects related to corruption and to the political legitimacy of actors involved in the process. Why, at that time, did the organisation not adopt the same degree of public concern with impartiality, selectivity and institutional risks that it currently expresses regarding the STF?
8. Has the Brazilian experience led TI to recognise that an anti-corruption agenda excessively focused on results may, in certain circumstances, underestimate risks related to due process, proportionality and the concentration of power?
9. How does Transparency International respond to the part of society that receives its current statements with distrust because of the perceived historical proximity between the organisation and the institutional environment of Car Wash?
10. Is there currently any formal self-criticism or retrospective assessment by TI-Brazil of its conduct during Car Wash and the political period that began in 2016? If not, does the organisation consider carrying out such an assessment?
11. Does TI-Brazil consider that the current Brazilian institutional environment shows consequences of, or lessons from, the institutional conflicts and accountability practices observed over the past decade?
12. Finally: if transparency, impartiality and accountability must also apply to those who fight corruption, in what respects does Transparency International consider that this yardstick failed, or was insufficiently applied, in Brazil over the past ten years?
The invitation remains open
The questions remain available for response, as does our editorial space for Transparency International Brazil's full statement, including after the publication of this article.
A response that contests our premises will be as welcome as one that confirms them. An explanation of any administrative difficulty will also be duly recorded.
We claim no authority to draw advance conclusions about the organisation's conduct, only the right to ask questions of evident public interest, including of those who have made transparency their main institutional banner.
The fight against corruption is too important to be left exclusively in the hands of those who claim to wage it. And transparency is too important to work in only one direction.
We are still waiting. For a month now.
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Editorial note and right of reply
On 17 September 2026, Lawfare4All sent Transparency International Brazil, through its institutional channels, an invitation to a written interview addressed to its executive director, Bruno Brandão.
The request followed the organisation's public statement of 16 September on the STF extraordinary session held the previous day.
As of the closing of this article, on 17 October 2026, we have received neither a response nor an acknowledgement of receipt. We attribute to the absence of a response no evidentiary meaning as to the existence of irregularities or the truth of hypotheses raised in the questionnaire.
Lawfare4All remains available to resend the interview and to publish the organisation's clarifications, with proper identification and faithfulness to the content received.
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