Among the recurring criticisms of Operation Car Wash—Brazil’s sweeping corruption investigation which for the last five years has caused untold damage to the country’s state-owned companies and construction firms—is that it has never gone after banks, despite the massive amounts of money laundering involved in many of Car Wash’s criminal cases.
However, it appears that this may have changed, with Wednesday’s news that Car Wash investigations have identified accounts opened in Brazil’s five biggest banks were used to launder a total of BRL 1.3 billion. Prosecutors are now attempting to determine whether failures in control systems at Itaú, Banco do...
