The head of the tax agency (SII) is the latest big name casualty in Chile’s political and business corruption scandal. Michel Jorratt had come under fire in recent months for not moving swiftly enough with the tax fraud and irregular campaign-financing cases that the attorney general’s office wanted to investigate. President Michelle Bachelet is desperate to regain the initiative having reacted so slowly to the scandal when it first broke and Jorratt’s departure looks designed to consolidate the sweeping cabinet changes she made on 11 May [WR-15-19]. The new finance minister, Rodrigo Valdés, requested that Joratt resign. When Joratt refused,…

BRAZIL | FHC fears Brazil losing its gains At the annual gala event held in New York to strength US-Brazilian relations, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), warned that Brazil could lose the gains it had made over the past few decades. The event brought together 450 businesses from both countries, as well as Cardoso and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Though Cardoso, a member of the opposition Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), would not be drawn on the corruption scandal at Petrobras, the state oil company, and refused to mention President Dilma Rousseff by name, he was…

The senate voted by 52 to 27 this week in favour of approving Luiz Edson Fachin to the federal supreme court (STF). The vote was a significant victory for President Dilma Rousseff, who nominated Fachin. Only five supreme court judges have ever been rejected by the senate in the history of Brazil as a republic, but the executive had looked so weak that at one point it appeared Fachin could have become the sixth. It is within the President’s power to appoint anyone, between the ages of 35 to 65, with notable juridical knowledge and an unblemished reputation, to the…

Petrobras, the troubled Brazilian state oil firm, was one of the big winners this week following the visit of Chinese premier Li Keqiang. While other former investors are suing Petrobras over its management’s cover-up of the massive corruption scandal at the firm, China is betting that the long-term future of the company is rosy. Various Chinese financial institutions, including the Export-Import Bank of China (Cexim) and the China State Development Bank, are investing up to US$10bn in Petrobras. Even more significant is the Chinese investment in Brazilian infrastructure which, if it ever gets off the ground, has the potential to…