More than 200 people have been charged by the crusading local federal judge, Sergio Moro. For more than a decade, Moro has been working closely with the same police officers and prosecutors who have made up part of the Carwash task force since 2014.
That group of young investigators, some of whom specialized in financial-crime studies at such universities as Harvard and Cornell, have identified 6.4 billion reais ($2.09 billion) in bribery payments at the heart of the scandal, mostly from 16 construction companies, including Odebrecht. Along with top executives at state oil company Petrobras, politicians and money launderers, those firms have been swept up in an investigation that is now spilling across borders and poised to leave its mark on economies across the region.
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