Brazil’s Supreme Court decided on Thursday to ban corporate donations to election campaign financing in a move to clean up Brazilian politics caught in a massive kickback scandal.
The top court voted 8-3 to allow election donations from individuals but not from companies, a decision that renders unconstitutional a bill passed last week by the country’s Congress allowing corporate funding for political parties.
The ruling comes in the midst of Brazil’s biggest corruption investigation into bribes and political kickbacks on contracts with state-oil company Petrobras. The funds allegedly went into the pockets of dozens of politicians in President Dilma Rousseff’s governing coalition.
The treasurer of her Worker’s Party is in jail, and her election-campaign accounts are under investigation to see whether bribe money was used to help re-elect her last October.
The scandal heightened public scrutiny of corporate funding as scores of executives from Brazil’s largest construction firms were indicted on corruption charges for paying bribes from overpriced contracts with Petroleo Brasileiro (PETR4.SA).
Brazil Energy Insight 
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