December 1989 – Following three decades of military rule and political transition, Fernando Collor de Mello of the conservative National Renewal Party (PRN—Partido da Renovação Nacional) wins the first direct presidential election in 29 years, defeating Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party (PT—Partido dos Trabalhadores) by a margin of 43 percent to 38 percent.
June 1992 – Congress forms a Parliamentary Investigation Commission (CPI—Comissão Parlamentar Inquérito) to investigate charges, first made by the president's brother Pedro, that Collor and his campaign treasurer had run a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling scheme. Though his yearly pre-tax salary totaled around US$30,000 and his financial disclosures from his presidential campaign listed only a US$16,000 stock portfolio and real estate worth US$500,000, Collor bled money, sinking cash into a new Mercedes convertible, a US$1.7 million Paris apartment, a US$20,000-per-month clothing and jewelry allowance for his wife, and a US$2.5 million garden renovation, which included the construction of eight artificial waterfalls, a 1,000-square-foot swimming pool, and a triple-level lagoon stocked with Japanese carp.
August 1992 – The three-month investigation of Collor reaches a crescendo when the Senate presents the 200-page report of the CPI's findings to the public in a live, nationally televised session that lasts five and a half hours. Based on calculations from about 40,000 canceled checks, investigators estimate that US$23 million had been shifted to Collor's family and friends.
September 1992 – Collor is impeached by a landslide vote of 441 to 38. The vote means that Collor is suspended for 180 days pending his trial in the Senate.
December 1992 – The day his official impeachment trial is scheduled to begin, President Collor resigns rather than face removal from office. Ignoring the resignation, the Senate continues with the trial and convicts Collor of corruption by a vote of 76 to 3. The presidency passes to the vice president pending the next election. Collor is later prosecuted for corruption, but despite the mountain of evidence, is exonerated by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
October 1994 – Earning over 54 percent of the vote, former sociologist and current Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso of the center-left Social Democrats (PSDB—Partido da Social Democrácia Brasileira) wins the presidency, defeating Lula, who earned 27 percent. Throughout his two-term tenure, Cardoso stresses the need for structural reforms in the economy, social security and the civil service system. Privatization and economic liberalization are a cornerstone of Cardoso's reform efforts.
April 1997 – São Paulo patrolman Otávio Lourenço Gambra is captured on tape while arbitrarily stopping cars, watching while officers under his command severely beat civilians and then himself shooting a passenger in cold blood. Gambra, nicknamed "Rambo," is arrested with nine other officers after the video is broadcast on national television. In October 1998, Gambra receives 65 years in jail for various crimes, including the nationally televised murder.
May 1997 – The Folha de São Paulo breaks a story alleging vote-buying in Congress by the Cardoso administration. The newspaper publishes transcripts of conversations between Chamber of Deputies members Ronivon Santiago and João Maia discussing bribes paid to themselves and three other members of Congress by Sergio Motta, minister of communications and a close friend of Cardoso. Motta had allegedly paid US$187,000 (200,000 reais) to each legislator to ensure their vote for a constitutional amendment in January that would allow a president to be re-elected. One week after the revelations are made public, the Senate passes the amendment. The same day, Santiago and Maia resign from Congress. Motta denies the accusations and dies of a lung infection in April 1998.
September 1998 – Federal agents arrest Lt. Col. Manoel Cavalcante for leading a 50-member shadow organization within the police. Known as the "Uniformed Gang," the squad is charged with multiple counts of political assassination, bank robbery, car theft and arms trafficking. Evidence surfaces showing that the gang charged clients US$440 to kill a union leader and US$44,000 to kill a famous politician who had been investigating white-collar crime. By year's end, Cavalcante is convicted of homicide and receiving stolen property, while the rest of the 50-man squad remained in jail and under investigation. Three of them were convicted of crimes in 1999.
October 1998 – Cardoso is re-elected to the presidency with 53 percent of the vote, marking Lula's third consecutive defeat in Brazil's presidential election.
November 1998 – Veja and several other newsmagazines release taped conversations of high-level government officials discussing how to influence bidding in the privatization of Telebrás, the national phone company. The tapes include Luiz Carlos Mendonça de Barros, the minister of communications, and André Lara Resende, president of the National Development Bank (BNDES—Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), discussing how to convince the Telemar investment group to underbid, and thus likely lose the auction, for Tele Norte Leste, one of the 16 companies formed during the privatization of Telebrás. Although not charged with any illegality, both men resign by the end of the month, as do BNDES Vice President José Pio Borges and Foreign Trade Secretary José Roberto Mendonça de Barros.
December 1998 – Congresswoman Ceci Cunha is assassinated with her husband and two in-laws by someone using a 12-gauge shotgun. Talvane Albuquerque, who had been defeated by Cunha in a bid for re-election the previous October, is next in line for the seat and assumes Cunha's spot in the Chamber of Deputies. A fellow congressman reveals taped conversations between Albuquerque and a hit man known as "Leather Hat" that allegedly involved discussions of a contract killing. On April 7, 1999, following a three-month investigation, Congress votes 427-29 to expel Albuquerque for "lack of parliamentary decorum" for consorting with "Leather Hat."
April 1999 – Former Central Bank president Francisco Lopes is arrested after refusing to testify during a Senate inquiry into a scandal involving Central Bank officials who allegedly gave private banks advance warning of changes to exchange rates and interest-rate policy. During his three weeks as president in early 1999, Lopes had been responsible for massive US$1.35 billion bank-sponsored bailouts of Banco FonteCindam and Banco Marka, and was replaced without explanation by President Cardoso. Shortly thereafter, Brazilian currency is devalued 39 percent. According to documents found by investigators in April, Lopes had hid US$1.6 million in a foreign bank account. It was further revealed that four banks each allegedly paid US$125,000 per month to Lopes to get inside information about monetary policy, including the future devaluation of the real. The bribery allegedly began two years earlier, when Lopes was the Central Bank's director of monetary policy. It was reported that Lopes had been blackmailed into performing the bailout by the head of Banco Marka, and that top government officials, including President Cardoso, were aware of Lopes' scheme and tried to cover it up so that they would not be tainted.
April 1999 – Congress launches a major new Parliamentary Investigation Commission to probe drug trafficking in Brazil. The members of the CPI soon earn the nickname "The Untouchables," in honor of the incorruptible Chicago crime-fighters who brought down gangster Al Capone in 1931.
April 1999 – Thirty-six kilos of cocaine are discovered in a Brazilian Air Force plane that touched down in the Spanish Canary Islands on its way to France. Two Air Force officers are suspected of heading the operation.
September 1999 – Former military police chief and first-time deputy Hildebrando Pascoal is expelled by his peers in the Chamber of Deputies for "lack of parliamentary decorum." The 700-page dossier of charges, however, is much more serious than a simple breach of decorum: Pascoal's drug ties are eventually linked to a brutal 16-state mafia suspected of using Air Force planes to smuggle cocaine to Europe, launder millions of dollars through São Paulo companies, and buy off judges, politicians, and police. According to witnesses, Pascoal's reign of terror left about 250 dead as hooded death squads dumped mutilated bodies in the streets, raided hospitals to kill wounded victims, and even pursued a victim across Brazil before decapitating him and returning his severed head to Pascoal. On one occasion, Pascoal allegedly supervised his henchmen as they hacked the limbs off one victim with a chainsaw, then personally executed the man with a pistol. Pascoal surrenders to police the day after his expulsion. On March 1, 2000, Pascoal is sentenced to more than six years in prison for tax fraud and other financial crimes.
November 1999 – Senator Luiz Estevão and Judge Nicolau dos Santos Neto are accused of pocketing money from the construction of the Regional Labor Tribunal of São Paulo, which quickly becomes a national symbol of corruption. The building project began in 1992; out of the US$233 million earmarked for its construction, 72 percent has vanished, and the building remains unfinished. By 1999, US$165 million had been paid for the construction of the Labor Tribunal, yet officials estimated that only US$44 million had actually been spent on it. Investigators showed that during Santos Neto's tenure, as much as US$169 million was diverted from government funds allocated for the construction of the new Regional Tribunal. Santos Neto was accused of holding 17 bank accounts in 11 countries, as well as interests in several tax havens, and was accused by his former son-in-law of having US$4.5 million in offshore accounts. Records revealed that the judge owned a US$1.6 million apartment in Miami, a BMW, a Porsche, two Mercedes, and many other items that were beyond his declared means. Calculating the value of Santos Neto's assets, investigators showed that in order to purchase all of those items with his monthly salary of US$3,500, Santos Neto would have had to save half his salary for 138 years. Santos Neto denied any connection to diversion of funds, and claimed instead that he had inherited his fortune from his uncle, a tailor. In June 2000, Estevão is removed from office when the Senate votes for the first time in 174 years to expel one of its members. In June 2002, Santos Neto is sentenced to an eight-year prison term for his role in the embezzlement scheme, but Estevão is acquitted.
January 2000 – Élcio Álvares, the first civilian defense minister in Brazilian history, is fired after the CPI links his former chief of staff and law partner with organized crime and drug trafficking.
February 2000 – The Chamber of Deputies' human rights commission launches an investigation into 100 deaths possibly linked to police death squads in and around the Federal District.
December 2000 – The CPI investigating the illegal drug trade releases a 1,200-page report accusing more than 800 Brazilians in 15 states of complicity in drug trafficking. The massive report compiles data from over 380,000 affidavits and concludes that US$50 billion—10 percent of the annual world total—is laundered by Brazil's 200,000-strong mafia. Implicated by the report are presidents of state legislatures, federal deputies, state officials, regional judges, policemen, bank presidents, and many other influential citizens.
April 2001 – PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) releases a 33-country study on business transparency showing that Brazil lost the most foreign direct investment in the world because of corruption, government secrecy, regulatory problems, and vague legal and accounting standards. PWC estimated that Brazil lost US$30.3 to US$40.3 billion per year in foreign direct investment, more than any other country the firm had investigated.
July 2002 – Brazil ratifies the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, signed by Cardoso in 1997.
October 2002 – In his fourth consecutive attempt to win election, left-wing candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earns the presidency, defeating José Serra of the PSDB by a vote of 61 percent to 39 percent. It is the first leftist government elected in Brazil's history.
July 2003 – Congress launches a CPI to probe allegations of a massive, high-level money-laundering operation that between 1996 and 1999 sent up to US$30 billion to foreign banks, much of that amount allegedly generated by drug trafficking and other illegal activity. The Banestado investigation, as it is known, is said to implicate top political leaders and businesses.
November 2003 – Police in the "Operation Grasshopper" investigation arrest a former state governor and dozens of his associates for allegedly stealing more than US$100 million in a scheme that used public money to pay for non-existent state jobs. Neudo Campos, governor of Roraima from 1995 to 2002, is charged with leading a ring of corruption that issued state funds to some 5,000 phantom state employees. Campos' case is pending, and the investigation of the scheme is ongoing.
December 2003 – Lula signs a decree creating a Commission for Public Transparency and Combating Corruption, an 18-member advisory council operating out of the Comptroller General's office.