Corruption is surging across Latin America

ON January 31st José Dias Toffoli, a judge on Brazil’s Supreme Court, suspended the payment of a $2.6bn fine by Novonor, a construction firm better known by its former name, Odebrecht. The previous month he had suspended another fine imposed on J&F, which owns the world’s biggest meatpacking company, JBS. The companies had agreed to the fines as part of leniency agreements in which their executives admitted to bribing Brazilian officials. Mr Toffoli ruled that there was reasonable doubt about whether the agreements were signed voluntarily, and argued that the judge who administered the fines may have colluded with prosecutors.