Tag Archives: elections

Brazil’s Odebrecht Continues Corrupting the Judicial Process to Evade Restitution

29 Oct

Norberto Odebrecht was founded in Brazil in 1944, and gradually expanded to become an international civil engineering giant. Then, in 2016, it signed a global leniency agreement in Brazil and pled guilty in the U.S. federal court to systemic bribery committed between 2001-16 and paid billions in criminal fines. In 2006, Odebrecht had institutionalized their bribing operations by running them through a new Division of Structured Operations. During the years investigated, Odebrecht had paid around $788 million in verified bribes to secure more than 100 large-scale projects across 12 countries, including the 2016 Olympic Games projects in Brazil, pipelines, and transit.

A year after Odebrecht pled guilty, in 2017, a civil lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York by claiming to be securities defrauded investor Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) over its $100 million loss in bonds. It faced an obstacle in 2020, when Judge Paul G. Gardephe dismissed a part of WSIB’s initial complaint because WSIB had not provided details on which financial statements were distorted by bribe amounts. In 2021, a second major civil lawsuit that had been brought by investor DoubleLine was obstructed by the granting of an order shielding Odebrecht’s communications from private investigators, seemingly to protect active foreign investigations. Then, in a 2023, amended complaint, WSIB fixed the glitch that previously derailed them by linking $280 million in bribes to specific distorted corporate assets: this finally convinced Judge Gardephe to lift his discovery stay and to allow WSIB to demand corporate records. Then, WSIB attempted to ask for a summary judgement based on the criminal finding of fraud, but Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses rejected this idea and asked them to litigate the case anew civilly. While the court had allowed litigants to begin asking for discovery years earlier, Odebrecht had not been complying with these requests, and in September 2026, it attempted to formally block all discovery by claiming Brazil’s Supreme Court had dismissed their leniency agreement due to prosecutorial misconduct.

In the latest development in WSIB v. Odebrecht S.A., Judge Moses ruled against Odebrecht, arguing Brazilian squabbles cannot be employed to prevent American civil discovery. The court is now deciding if the parties will proceed by Odebrecht actually opening themselves to discovery scrutiny, or if they will begin settlement negotiations.

It has been a decade since Odebrecht confessed and opened their files to Brazilian prosecutors, and yet after a decade of attempts from investors to be compensated they have not been able to begin a case because the “details” of how Odebrecht was defrauding them is hidden in he files Odebrecht is refusing to turn over. Without access to the evidence, the prosecutors cannot prove the thing they know the evidence would logically state, based on what the criminal pleading indicates.

Only now is the U.S. court even beginning to rule on the irrationality of Odebrecht’s objections: Brazilian law cannot bar them from disclosing the facts of their briberies. Their leniency agreement was designed to protect the criminal Brazilian investigators, not the books that prove the corruption of executives, operators or investors of Odebrecht. The change that prompted this sudden renewal of litigation activities is that the Brazilian Operation Carwash has concluded back in 2021 (after 278 convictions and the recovery of $800 million), and these investigators have made public the facts in the accounts recording the briberies, and their depositions about them (released back in 2017). Thus, records are now public, even if Odebrecht continues refusing to surrender these records. The reason for a decade-long stall is partially clarified by the finding of illegal collusion between Chief Judge Sergio Moro and the prosecutors in Operation Carwash in Brazil, which have led to the Brazilian Supreme Court’s annulling of most of this operations convictions and fines due to misconduct. These absurdly stumbling trials are themselves evidence of Odebrecht’s ongoing successes at corrupting the criminal and civil judicial processes. Odebrecht is still an active company, with annual revenues that have dropped to around a billion from a peak of $30 billion pre-scandal. It is the vulture investors who anticipated Odebrecht’s “sudden” or artificially orchestrated legal collapse in 2016 who made a lot of money, and it might be their accounts that Odebrecht has been fighting to protect from implication. They also made a windfall when the Supreme Court refunded Odebrecht’s apparently temporary corruption fines.

This case proves that following-the-money is not possible without hacks when the sued party corrupts the system into blocking the legal opening of their books. And in such cases of billions-worth-in-corruption, there are no good guys. Even the 2019 Intercept uncovering of messages between Carwash prosecutors and Judge Moro showing a coordination of strategies served to reverse the criminal findings, instead of bringing new charges against the exposed judge and prosecutors. Perhaps, anti-corruption investigations are doomed to be corrupted? Who can resist bribes with billions on-offer? Across the decades the bribery and the failed lawsuits have been happening the Workers’ Party has been mostly in charge. Luiz da Silva, who just won a fourth term in October 2026, was the president between 2003-10, followed by Workers’ Party’s Dilma Rousseff (2011-6), before Rousseff was impeached and removed from office. Operation Carwash’s prosecutors had argued that the Workers’ Party was running the pay-to-play ring that Odebrecht was merely a player in. There was a claim that Lula secretly owned a house that Odebrecht and another construction company had spent over $200,000 remodeling, among other “gifts”. These accusations convinced Judge Moro to convict Lula of corruption and money laundering, for which he spent 580 days in federal prison. The 2019 Intercept leak found evidence against Judge Moro and annulled Lula’s conviction. This is why Lula could run for office yet again, and has just won. And Lula has been crushing his opponents through the courts, including convicting Jair Bolsonaro of attempting a coup d’etat for plotting a violent overthrow to overturn his failed 2022 election run. And immediately after Senator Flavio Bolsonaro lost the most recent 2026 election Lula targeted him with multiple criminal investigations over money laundering (via links to a sports-betting corporation), raising money from a financier for a film about his father, and securing campaign financing from U.S. conservative donors. And now Flavio has illegally (despite his passport being seized in Brazil) escaped into the U.S., where he has been granted visas by Trump. There are no good guys in this story, but it is a dramatic and captivating saga.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Brazil’s Odebrecht Continues Corrupting the Judicial Process to Evade Restitution.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 29, 2026).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Squabbles Over “Genuine” Signatures vs Stopping Israel-U.S. War Profiteering

28 Oct

In Alan H. Peres and Piergiorgio Uslenghi v. The Municipal Officers Electoral Board for the Village of Oak Park, et al. (2026), the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed that a public referendum petition substantially complied with the Illinois Election Code, rendering it valid despite an accidental omission of the explicit statutory phrase certifying that the signatures “are genuine.”

The proponents are Caren Van Slyke and Jesse Simon Bauer, who circulated a petition to this village’s residents to put a question before their voters in the upcoming November 3, 2026 ballot: “[s]hould the State of Illinois repeal laws that ban state investment in businesses that boycott the State of Israel?” This petition obtained 3,504 signatures from undisputed registered voters. But then Alan H. Peres and Piergiorgio Uslenghi filed an objection to this petition at the Oak Park Electoral Board to prevent this question from appearing on the ballot by arguing the certification statements on these petition sheets were defective by failing to specify these signatures were “genuine”. The words of the certifying statement is a paraphrase of the standard language, which specifies the person signing is a “qualified elector”, but does note specifically the signatures were not forgeries. The court ruled that this deviation was insubstantial, or that the wording that was included met the intent of the requirement to include this certifying language.

Justice Pucinski delivered the judgement, arguing the statement served the intended purpose of validating the identity of the signers. Denying the rights of the signors on this technicality would have unjustly denied their voting rights. Justice Hyman dissented, arguing the allowance of a substitution of “presence” for “genuineness” changes this legislative mandate, inviting more creative rewordings in the future.

The distance this miswording has gone in the courts almost suggests somebody intentionally inserted this mistake to attempt to disqualify this referendum if it succeeded in finding enough signatures. And the investment in covering court fees by the filers indicates they were overly interested in reversing what so many in their village wanted to vote on. And wasn’t there a bigger problem in the wording of the referendum question itself: why would it be logical to ban investments in the businesses operated in Israel, as opposed to banning investments in its government? Isn’t it directly antisemitic to boycott all Israeli businessmen? Though blocking the businesses of countries with whose leaders American politicians disagree is a standard, as seen in the ongoing blockade of Cuba.

Boycotting countries is typically within the federal jurisdiction. Some city councils or state legislative bills have handled such boycott requests. There has been a unique movement to divest from Israel via local ballots, like the one that passed in Somerville, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. The latter referendum referred to foreign countries engaged in severe violations of human rights, as opposed to Israel specifically. There have not been any statewide referendums to boycott Israel. States have moved in the opposite direction, with 37 states passing binding anti-BDS laws or executive orders that have penalized or banned contracting with businesses that are publicly boycotting Israel.

The movement to boycott Israel is not entirely strange, as during Apartheid in the 1970-80s dozens of U.S. cities, universities and state legislatures voted to divest public funds or pensions from companies doing business in South Africa. On the federal level, the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, authorized state and local governments to divest from companies operating in Sudan’s power, mineral or oil sectors. And the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) orchestrates economic embargos or business-blocking for countries on the Department of State’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” blacklist, which includes Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Since the start of the war after the terrorist attack in October 2023, Israel’s economy has been surging (by 130% in the Tel Aviv stock market), despite a drop in its labor force due to the mobilization of reservists and a leveling of tourism and construction (due to fears related to the war). The major economic hit has been the $114 billion in debt Israel’s government has taken on to wage this war. The U.S. has spent around $33 billion on this conflict. Thus, if Americans believe this war can be ended by draining Israel’s military budget, U.S. would logically stop spending money on this war on the U.S. end and would stop giving military aid to Israel. But the U.S. has instigated wars with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East, so it is not merely aiding Israel but rather is pushing Israel into perpetual conflict. The problem is perpetual warmongering: wars are too profitable for the companies selling the tools of war for them to allow federal blockades. And the U.S. might have to label itself as a terrorist state, if it puts Israel on this list, given their joint operations that have put Israel on international human rights violation lists.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Squabbles Over “Genuine” Signatures vs Stopping Israel-U.S. War Profiteering.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 30, 2026).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Voter vs Ohio County Board Choosing Primary Substitute in a Closed Meeting

26 Oct

Can a county Board of Elections choose a substitute candidate in a closed meeting? This was the central question in The State ex rel. Koebel v. Erie County Board of Elections et al debated in the Ohio Supreme Court. It was filed by a voter who demanded the removal of a Republican replacement candidate from the shortly forthcoming November 2026 general election ballot. While the court agreed this voter’s claims had legal standing, they objected that his 25-day delay in filing this lawsuit meant that they were now beyond the point when ballots could be changed without extremely wasteful costs. Overseas and military ballots had already been mailed starting on September 18. And rewriting and reprinting 36,450 physical ballots was deemed to be too costly.

Events began on August 4, when D.J. Swearingen won the Republican primary but then withdrew from the general election. On August 10, a Republican Party district committee met behind closed doors and chose Caleb Stidham as their replacement nominee. The filer of this lawsuit is a regular voter, Carl Koebel, who tried to gain entry to this meeting, but was denied entry. Koebel has argued that the closure of this meeting to the public meant this committee took upon themselves to perform an illegal (by Ohio’s Open Meetings Act) sovereign governmental function. Then, on August 20, the Erie County Board of Elections reached a 2-2 tie to certify Stidham that had to be broken by Secretary of State Frank LaRose in favor of Stidham’s certification. Koebel’s petition for removal was filed on September 14.

The outcome of Koebel’s filing was that the court reaffirmed the Ohio precedent that any voter has a beneficial interest to sue an election board to force their performance of statutory duties. However, Koebel’s delay invalidated the filing, meaning the court did not have to decide on if the nomination violated the Open Meetings rule. A minority of judges—Justice Brunner and Chief Justice Kennedy—had wanted to vote on the merits despite the tardiness.

According to Ohio’s procedural rules, when a nominee withdraws, the replacement is made by a district committee made up of county party leaders. Political parties are private organizations that can hold closed meetings to choose a replacement candidate. An exception has developed in Ohio after Jones v. Geauga County Republican Party Central Committee (2017) that decided that whenever a private party meets to fill a public government vacancy it is performing a “sovereign governmental function”, and this falls under the Open Meetings Act. The 2017 case had addressed the appointment of vacancies such as county commissioner or sheriff, whereas this latest case is about appointing a county party nominee. Thus, this could have been an interesting case for the court to address if it would not have been wasteful to engage in debate at the cost of complicating and spiking the cost of an ongoing election.

Though the more interesting question nobody has asked is: why are parties private? Why are a few unelected people gathering in closed rooms to decide who the public is allowed to vote on? Though America is more democratic than other countries in some regards. Elsewhere, political parties are also private, and they privately select their candidates, whereas in the U.S. the public votes in primary elections to instruct these private institutions who they should forward as their candidate. Though even if slightly more democratic, the private party system invites antidemocratic corruptions. The voters should see some list of positions of all candidates on issues they care about and click to pick how they side on the issues to choose a candidate. Or better yet, true democracy would mean voters logging into a national voting system and voting separately on each item a representative would otherwise vote over on their behalf. Directly choosing to go to war or not, or what government funds should be spent on would override many of the problems we face when representatives’ votes can be bought by interested corporations, foreign entities, or other actors.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “Voter vs Ohio County Board Choosing Primary Substitute in a Closed Meeting.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 26, 2026).

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

86% of Maine’s Voters Banned Foreign Election Interference, Before CMP’s Money Reversed Their Decision

24 Oct

In Central Maine Power Company (CMP), et al. v. Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, et al., the United States District Court for the District of Maine granted motions to allow CMP to continue donating to political candidates by declaring two portions of Maine’s new campaign finance law unconstitutional, but denied motions regarding the remainder of the statute, allowing the rest of the law to survive through legal severance.

The first element the court objected to in the law is the 5% corporate foreign ownership rule, arguing that this was too small of a share, and that only a controlling shareholder should be significant enough to exclude a corporation’s influence over elections. The second point was over if a foreign government “directly or indirectly participates in the decision-making process” over elections spending. The court interpreted the latter as possibly merely meaning a foreign government had consulted a corporation, even if this corporation was fully owned by American shareholders.

According to OpenSecrets, CMP and its parent company Avangrid have largely spent money on ballot referendums. By donating over $35 million to the Maine Affordable Energy PAC, they defeated a referendum that would have forced a consumer buyout of the utility grid. And they spent tens of millions to defend their referendum for a hydropower transmission line through western Maine.

Maine passed a ballon initiative restricting Foreign Government-Influenced Entities (FGIE) back in 2023. The Act could apply a $5,000 civil penalty or double the amount donated. They could no longer spend on elections, and their public communications had to carry mandatory disclosures of foreign-influence. It also applied a new burden onto media companies to check if block ads that failed to meet these disclosure rules. Because of this lawsuit, this law was blocked on the eve it was going to go into effect. This stillborn law had passed by a historic 86% margin. The law had been led by the nonpartisan Protect Maine Elections, and democracy reform groups such as American Promise and Maine Clean Elections. And Free Speech for People and Campaign Legal Center have filed amicus briefs arguing the 5% limit is a globally recognized threshold. Though most democracies, such as France, Canada, Japan and South Korea, completely ban corporate political contributions: foreign and domestic. Thus, there limit is 0%. After the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling that allowed unlimited spending on elections by American corporations, U.S. states and cities have begun applying the 5% threshold to at least limit foreign spending.

Aside from Maine, there was also a failed attempt to implement foreign spending limits in Minnesota. The only state where a spending limit is currently being enforced is in Washington, which uses the controlling-share limit, as opposed to the 5% cutoff. The only places in the U.S. that have a 5% limit being enforced are the cities of Seatle (2020-) and San Jose (2024-).

Leading up to and after Citizens United, there has been systematic campaign to corrupt U.S. elections by arguing that corporations have a First Amendment right to “speak” with unlimited campaign contributions. Since the 2016 election of Donald Trump had been judged by oversight agencies to have been interfered in by foreign actors—especially Russia—this wave of attempts to counteract America’s slide into unbridled corruption could have given some hope, if it had not been repeatedly quashed by moneyed interests. Corporate donations had been banned in the U.S. by the 1907 Tillman Act. Because corporations reacted by attempting to donate indirectly, a few acts—between 1947 and 2002—followed that further limited activities, such as requiring that corporate employees could only donate indirectly into Political Action Committees (PACs). Citizens United reversed this march towards democratic representation. If CMP had not been able to block the Pine Tree Power buyout, Maine taxpayers would have taken on $13.5 billion in debt to buy the utility, but could have been rewarded with improved reliability and a lower electricity cost. And while the NECEC corridor added tons of energy to the grid, it clear-cut pristine northern Maine woods (undercutting tourism and wildlife) to bring power to Massachusetts. The point of democratic referendums is to invite voters to decide which among such choices they care most about. When 86% of Maine’s voters voted against foreign interference, and a corporation with these foreign influences could buy their way into winning a lawsuit to reverse the voters’ decision, this is an extreme case of anti-democratic voting-system suppression.

Suggested Citation:
Faktorovich, Anna. “86% of Maine’s Voters Banned Foreign Election Interference, Before CMP’s Money Reversed Their Decision.” Anaphora’s Law Review (October 24, 2026).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,