[JURIST] The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil [official website] on Thursday banned [press release, in Portuguese] corporate entities from providing funding to political candidates in the future. The court found that the large role corporations played in campaign funding was unconstitutional and compromised the legitimacy of the elections. The Superior Electoral Court [official website] conducted a study [report, in Portuguese] that calculated 76 percent of the total campaign funding in 2014 came from large corporations. Three of the eight justices who voted to maintain corporate funding said they found nothing in the constitution to prohibit it.

Brazil continues to struggle with allegations of corruption in spite of its attempts to combat risks against corruption in politics and business, including the enactment of a new anti-corruption law [Association of Corporate Counsel report] in August 2013. The law [text, in Portuguese] took effect on January 28, 2014. The Petrobras [website] scandal led to numerous corruption charges, including money laundering and racketeering, against a number of Petrobras senior executives and some of Brazil’s most powerful politicians. In August Brazil’s attorney general charged [JURIST report] the ex-president of Brazil and Eduardo Cunha, current speaker of the lower house of congress, with corruption linked to the Petrobras scandal.