I F THERE IS one thing voters wanted from Jair Bolsonaro when they elected him Brazil’s president last October it was to end corruption. When he was a right-wing congressional backbencher, his fulminations against “os corruptos” helped make him famous. In his inauguration speech on January 1st he promised to “free the country from the yoke of corruption”.

Now, his plans to keep his most important campaign promise are failing. That is because his administration looks nearly as scandal-prone as the one it replaced. One of his sons, Flávio, a senator from Rio de Janeiro (pictured left), is being investigated for money-laundering. Messages leaked to the Intercept, an investigative news website, have damaged the reputation of Sérgio Moro, the justice minister, who is in charge of fighting corruption and crime. They show that Mr Moro collaborated improperly with prosecutors when he was the judge in charge of the vast Lava Jato anti-corruption investigation. The operation led to the jailing of more than 100 businessmen and several politicians, including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president.

The tourism minister is being investigated for putting up female paper candidates in congressional and state elections to get campaign funds meant for them. Mr Bolsonaro nominated another son, Eduardo, to be Brazil’s ambassador to the United States, adding nepotism to his administration’s list of sins.

The president can claim some successes, including progress on economic reform. He broke with past presidents’ practice of giving cabinet jobs in exchange for support in congress. So far, that is his only contribution to cleaner politics.

A low point came on July 16th, when Dias Toffoli, a justice on the supreme court, suspended the investigation of Flávio Bolsonaro. Police had identified an “exceptional increase” in his net worth tied to property deals between 2014 and 2017, when he was a state congressman. Seven million reais ($2m) passed without explanation through the bank account of his driver, a friend of the president.

Mr Toffoli ruled that prosecutors need permission from a judge to use financial data collected by COAF , the government financial-intelligence unit, and other agencies. The supreme court has been considering since 2017 whether to issue such a ruling. It is due to decide in November this year. Mr Toffoli acted on his own after Flávio’s lawyers joined the suit. The ruling throws anti-corruption investigations into a “state of instability and confusion”, says Silvana Batini, a Lava Jato prosecutor from Rio de Janeiro. It could also hinder probes of money-laundering by drug gangs.

The president welcomed the decision to suspend the case against his son. Otherwise he has gone quiet on corruption. In the second half of 2018 he tweeted 68 times about corruption, according to the Electronic Government Laboratory at the University of Brasília. The number of tweets dropped to 20 in the first half of this year. In July there has so far been none.

Mr Moro, weakened by the leaks, has said nothing about Mr Toffoli’s decision. An anti-crime and corruption measure he proposed is making little progress. The committee responsible for it in the lower house of congress has voted down one idea to punish wrongdoing: writing into law the requirement that people convicted of corruption begin their sentences if they lose their first appeals, which does not always happen now.

So far, Brazilians have not noticed that the anti-corruption dream team are failing them. True, Mr Bolsonaro’s approval rating of 33% in early July was the lowest since 1990 for any president after six months in office, according to Datafolha, a pollster. But scandals are not the reason. More often, respondents point to the impact of a weak economy, cuts to university budgets and unpresidential behaviour (Mr Bolsonaro recently called governors of poor north-eastern states paraíbas, or “hicks”).

Embarrassing headlines have not stopped parts of his programme from moving ahead, which was not the case during the presidency of his predecessor, Michel Temer. Mercosur, a group to which Brazil belongs, has reached a trade agreement in principle with the European Union (see article). A reform of pensions is advancing.

If the corruption fight is to resume, prosecutors say, both the supreme court and the president will have to change course. Prosecutors hope that the court will reverse Mr Toffoli’s decision, unblocking investigations into Flávio and other alleged wrongdoers. Progress will depend partly on whom Mr Bolsonaro chooses to succeed Raquel Dodge as Brazil’s attorney-general in September. Mr Bolsonaro has waffled about whether he will pick one of the three candidates proposed by the National Association of Prosecutors. That practice began in 2003 as a way of ensuring the attorney-general’s independence from politics. Mr Bolsonaro’s choice will be “a big test of the government’s commitment” to fight corruption, says Bruno Brandão of Transparency International, an NGO .

Despite its flaws, Lava Jato offered the hope that Brazil might end the culture of impunity that allowed corruption to flourish. The question now is whether that quest can overcome the damage inflicted on it by its biggest champions.■