Abstract
Building on previous research, the presentation provides an overview of corruption control before, during and after Operation Car Wash in Brazil. It maps both the long-term and short-term trends of political accountability that allowed the operation to flourish and its consequences, providing a tentative prognosis of corruption control in Brazil, which seems to have regressed to patterns much prior to the emergence of the investigation. Moving beyond the Brazilian case, it tests the consequences of massive criminal accountability efforts such as Car Wash for judicial independence. Based on a novel dataset called Heads of Government Convicted of Crimes (HGCC), it finds that the conviction of former presidents, prime-ministers, or dictators is associated with a reduction in judicial independence and powers, suggesting that dynamics of the Brazilian case is not unique.