The Summer Olympics are in Jeopardy
Yesterday, just four months before the start of the 2016 Olympics, Brazil's sports minister resigned.
Hours later, it was reported that the commander of a Brazilian security force involved in preparations for the upcoming Olympics in Rio de Janeiro stepped down amid scandal.
The day before that, Brazil’s Minister of Tourism resigned.
Taken together this might raise concerns for the status of the Olympic games.
However, these resignations were hardly even noticed due to a political scandal that will likely soon see the impeachment of President Rousseff, as well as the criminal prosecutions of the former president, the current vice president, the Senate president, the House president, and over half of Brazil's Congress.
Brazil is currently experiencing one of the worst political crisis in it's history, while at the same time it is being hit by it's worst economic crisis in modern history, and it appears that both crisis are about to peak with the start of the largest sports spectacle in the world.
It doesn't take much imagination to see how the political and economic chaos could jeopardize the Olympic games.
And it's all because of a money exchange at a suburban Posto da Torre (Tower Gas Station) in Brazilia.
In 2008, a businessman named Hermes Magnus approached the police and told them that a criminal gang was attempting to launder money through his company (Dunel Indústria e Comércio), a manufacturer of electronic components. The police investigated, but instead of finding a criminal gang, they found four criminal gangs.
From there the investigation led to Brazil’s national oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro, one of Latin America’s largest companies.
The Workers’ Party (PT) and its coalition partners appointed their own candidates to Petrobras’ most important executive positions. These figures, led by Paulo Roberto Costa, a former director, secretly diverted funds valued at up to 3 per cent of all contracts to the PT and its coalition partners. This amounted to billions of dollars because of the huge investment in the pre-salt and an accompanying refinery programme.
The corrupt directors collaborated with Petrobras’ contractors, including some of Brazil’s largest construction companies, to line their own pockets. Some of the directors accumulated funds of more than $100m in Swiss bank accounts while others put the money into extravagant art collections. They were assisted by a ring of black market money dealers, led by convicted criminal Alberto Youssef, who was in charge of laundering the funds. Investigators suspect the scheme was part of a “project of power” to keep the PT and its allies in government by using funds from Petrobras to pay off the ruling coalition and fund election campaigns.
In April 2015 Petrobras would announce that it would book almost $17 billion in write-downs due to graft and overvalued assets.
Since then the investigation has uncovered bribery in connection with the Olympics.
Police and prosecutors are investigating if the Brazilian building giant Odebrecht paid bribes to secure work on a new subway line, which will connect the city’s beach zone to a station close to the Olympic Park, and the on redevelopment of the city’s port area....“The level of organization revealed by these documents is shocking. It would appear that all major public works were commissioned in this way and every major political party seems to have been involved,” says Sylvio Costa, the founder of the Brasilia-based watchdog Congress in Focus, which reports on corruption.
Last week President Rousseff got caught trying to protect former president Lulu from prosecution.
Earlier in the day, Lula was appointed cabinet chief in a controversial move that Rousseff said would strengthen her government, but which critics argued was an attempt to shield the former president, who is under investigation for corruption and money-laundering, from prosecution.
Under Brazilian law, government ministers can be tried only in the “privileged forum” of the supreme court.
Lulu has been indicted just days before. The move didn't work because the phone conversations were being recorded.
Judge Sergio Moro, the lead prosecutor in Operation Lava-jato, a two-year investigation into corruption at the state-run oil company, Petrobras, released nearly 50 audio recordings to the media on Wednesday evening, prompting chaotic scenes in congress as opposition deputies demanded Rousseff’s resignation.
In the most damaging conversation, recorded on Wednesday afternoon, Rousseff tells Lula that she is sending him over his ministerial papers “in case of necessity”.
This caused the governing political coalition to essentially collapse.
Literally millions of Brazilians have turned out to protest this corrupt government.
At this point its hard to say where the scandal might end. It's also hard to comprehend just how far it has already come.
Since then, investigators have uncovered R$6.2bn in bribes paid and total losses to the state estimated at between R$29bn and R$42bn. They have charged 179 people with criminal offences and secured 93 convictions. Added together, the sentences equal nearly 1,000 years in jail.
The political crisis alone is enough, but the economic crisis is a doozy as well.
The latest numbers coming out of Brazil confirm what Goldman Sachs said last December: “What started as a recession ... is now mutating into an outright economic depression, given the deep contraction of domestic demand.”
In Rio de Janeiro alone, 1,200 small businesses have already closed thanks to rising costs and slowing sales. Unemployment is now at 16.5 percent and the real, Brazil’s currency, has lost a quarter of its value against the dollar just in the last 12 months...
In the last nine years, debt has tripled not only for the government but for consumers and private companies as well. The government’s deficits are now so large that it is being forced to borrow just to make the interest payments. This is reflected by the junk rating given to the country’s sovereign debt by agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and Fitch.
Brazil's economy shrank 3.8% last year and is expected to shrink another 3.5% this year.
Inflation is threatening to get out of control and the currency is unstable.
To put it simply, Brazil is positioned to be hit by a perfect storm of both a political and an economic crisis just as the eyes of the world are turning toward it.
The action outside of the sports arenas might be a lot more interesting than the games inside the arenas.
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Comments
Meanwhile, here in the USA
We have no issues with bribery and if we have something as nasty as a depression we simply call it something else.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
"we simply call it something else"
I believe the term you are searching for is "business as usual".
How can we import the Brazilian Justice Department, so that we can finally prosecute Wall Street and Congress?
Bribery - Lobbying, political contributions in USA
Wonder if the taxpayers will wind up bailing out what ever TV network has paid billions to show these "games." remember, they are games.
$17 billion in graft..pffft..
$17 billion in graft..pffft...that's chump change in Washington DC. US pols are so brazen, they don't even try to hide it anymore.
"If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, take their money and then vote against them you've got no business being in Congress."
As the healthcare legislation showed
You could literally hand out checks on the floor of Congress and nobody cared.
How is that not boldfaced corruption?
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
Virus
When you add the zeta virus scare, the olympics really do seem endangered.
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire
There is a problem with the water in Brazil. It's a serious
health hazard.
***
Dead fish and garbage in Rio's Guanabara Bay question Brazil's Olympic celebrations
Thousands of dead fish washed up on the shores of Rio’s Guanabara Bay during the week, not far from where events are being held at this year’s Olympic Games, environmental officials said. The incident was the latest involving water quality in the bay, where sailing, open water swimming, and triathlon races are due to take place during the Games in August.
http://en.mercopress.com/2016/01/16/dead-fish-and-garbage-in-rio-s-guana...
***
Rio water pollution and Brazil’s financial crisis to dominate IOC meeting
*
In August, 13 of the 40-strong USA rowing team came down with stomach illness at the world junior championships in Rio – a test event for next year’s Olympics – with the team doctor expressing suspicions it was because of pollution in the lagoon where the competition took place.
British rowers competing in Rio in the summer were warned not to splash the water or jump in at the end of races, or to swim in the sea during their free time. A German sailor, Erik Heil, was treated in hospital for the flesh-eating bacteria MRSA shortly after a test event in Rio’s Guanabara Bay in August. An Associated Press investigation revealed evidence of raw sewage in the water in July.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/07/rio-2016-olympic-games-ioc-...
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
raw sewage, beginning from the top of a mountain
growing in size and volume as it passes through hundreds of communities (none of which treat the sewage) leading directly into the waters where they planned to hold the water sports.
Heh, considering that water sports include the bizarre act of sexual partners emptying their bladders onto their naked partner, I guess that term is fitting in more than one way.
There was another team (mainly coaches and scouts) that scoped out the site, and with just slight contact with the water in a boat (possibly a kayak), every member of that got sick, including Hep C for one person.
There have been rumblings that several teams (including USA) will be boycotting Rio because of the health risk.
I heard about the MRSA case, too. Yuck. That is nasty. Then again, so is Hep C.
Drought
This was from last November, but the causes are not going away.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/11/22/455751848/as-brazils-la...
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
An Idea to Save The Olympics
I am a big hoops fan. I love the international basketball competitions like the Olympics. It's fun watching NBA stars play for their home countries, and to discover players from around the world who have major game, who you have never seen play before.
NBA players will be docked on a cruise ship off the coast. They will go from the ship to the events and back to the ship. Chris Paul, star of the LA Clippers, and also known as State Farm Agent Cliff Paul, will not play "to spend time with the family." If I were an NBA player (and I still may be one some day), I might bow out to avoid the headaches. I feel more stars might bow out, although the cruise ship idea means more players will go.
Anyway, to my idea. Take every different Olympic sport, and let countries or even cities or states around the world volunteer to host an Olympic Tournament of that one sport. Basketball should be in California, where I live of course. If it is in Vegas, alas, I will relent and travel there out of the goodness of my heart.
Anyway, many locales will see it as a valuable economic opportunity, and they will volunteer for a sport that they happen to be set up to host well. For instance, any city with a football stadium can host Track and Field. For the more specialized sports, the locales with the best set-up ready to go, and the tourist logistics in place, will get the gig.
Just an idea, because athletes around the world should be anticipating this seminal moment in their lives with great joy and hope, not fear and loathing. Anything less is a huge bummer.
And I really don't want them to cancel basketball.
GradySeasons
"The nightlife ain't no good life, but it's my life."
And interesting thought, but...
...it would be logistically challenging to say the least. It would mean booking venues as well as travel and hotels for a lot of athletes with only a few months notice. Travel plans for all the spectators would be ruined. TV coverage would be severely hampered. Minor sports would probably get no coverage at all. If Brazil can't pull this together they'd be more likely to just cancel the games, I would think. But they'll pull it together. Way too much money on the line. It may well end up being a disaster, but they'll go forward.
On another note, does anyone trust that corrupt, incompetent government to provide effective security? I'm not one of those people who wets his pants worrying about terrorism all the time, but it's certainly a huge concern for the world's biggest spectacle.
Greenwald on Brazil
Glenn Greenwald wrote about Brazil's problems a couple of weeks ago. He argues the protests are not people powered, but is the elite trying to bring down the PT party (Workers Party, considered center left). Glenn got a lot of pushback in the comments. It was interesting to me to note David Miranda's name in the byline with Glenn.
It's a complicated mess to me, gjohnsit, but I thought you and others might like to see it.
Hermes Magnus???
Had to check this wasn't an April Fool joke. Hermes being, among other things, the patron god of thieves and Magnus of course meaning great. Not the name on his birth certificate, presumably?
Sound like worse problems involved than possible cancellation of a major sporting event.
Euterpe2
Or a take on Hermes Trismagister. nt
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
Maybe
Thrice-Great Hermes, the alleged author of ancient alchemical treatises...wondered about that, and what the connection could be.
Euterpe2
the olympics
are deeply stupid, a colossal waste of energy and resources. Everywhere they go they bring corruption and destruction. They should be held solely and always in Greece, where they began, every four years, in the summer only, and all the participants should compete naked, as in the original Olympics, and represent no "nation," or any other entity, but only themselves.
I think they represented
their city, if memory serves?
Euterpe2
not
in the beginning. When the games were of foot-races of women.
And, in any event, that sort of thing—humans yoked to representing cities; and, indeed, cities themselves—it is over.
Almost forgot
Brazil has their very own BlackLivesMatter movement too.
I am beginning to feel jinxed.
As for Olympics, they suck. Bribery, performance-enhancing drugs...just a money maker for people who already have more money than God. And Summer Olympics includes equestrian events. Those horses will be drinking that shitty water. (It is literally shitty.)
But I have a trip planned to Brazil in October. I managed to hit Bangkok for the protests and overthrow...Athens for the protests and elections...now, Brazil. Zeka I can deal with. Mosquito repellant, doncha know. Will I be there for the October Surprise?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981