The death of a Supreme Court justice handling corruption accusations against dozens of Brazilian politicians will not derail the country's biggest ever graft probe but will delay it, handing valuable breathing space to President Michel Temer.
Justice Teori Zavascki was killed in a plane crash on Thursday, just weeks before he was due to unveil explosive testimony from executives at engineering group Odebrecht SA that is expected to implicate as many as 200 politicians in a vast kickback scandal.
Postponing the fallout from evidence that could incriminate powerful political figures in his coalition gives the president more time to push through reforms to generous pension and labour rules and restore business confidence in a country stuck in a two-year recession.
"This can give Temer more room to move ahead with his reform agenda in Congress but Zavascki's death won't stall or change the course of the investigations," said Thiago de Aragao, partner at ARKO consultancy that advises corporations and banks on investment in Brazil. "It will just pause it for a while." Temer, who has himself been named by one defendant as a recipient of illegal campaign funds, has said he will rapidly appoint a new justice who, under Supreme Court rules, would take over Zavascki's cases.
The nominee would have to be confirmed by the Senate, which could take weeks if not months after Congress returns from its Christmas recess in February.
The new judge would then need to get up to speed on the sprawling corruption investigation, dubbed Operation Car Wash, which is centred on bribes and political kickbacks from state-run companies, principally oil company Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., commonly known as Petrobras.
"Zavascki was ready to resolve Car Wash promptly and take decisions that would clear up who could stay in government or Congress and who had to go," said Ives Gandra Martins, a constitutional lawyer in Sao Paulo.
Those decisions will be delayed until at least March or April, Martins said, preventing Brazil from turning the page on a corruption probe so massive and complex it paralysed public sector construction projects and deepened the recession.
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