To lose one minister in the first two and a half weeks of government may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like an administration in crisis. Last week, Romero Jucá, the planning minister, was forced out following the publication of secret tape recordings by Sérgio Machado, the former president of Transpetro, a subsidiary of the state oil company Petrobras. In the tapes, Jucá appeared to suggest impeachment would be a way of limiting ‘Operation Car Wash’. On 29 May, the broadcast of further conversations sealed the fate of Fabiano Silveira, the minister of transparency or the equivalent of Brazil’s anti-corruption czar. Transparency International, the Berlin-based NGO, and Silveira’s own staff refused to work with him after it emerged he had advised Renan Calheiros, the president of the federal senate, on how to avoid the scrutiny of prosecutors.End of preview - This article contains approximately 900 words.
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