Brazil’s shy ‘Car Wash’ judge is loved and loathed celebrity
CURITIBA, Brazil — A shy federal judge based in a provincial capital has become an unlikely celebrity in Brazil, where he is shaking up the nation’s power structure while overseeing what may be the largest corruption probe in Latin American history.
Passers-by mostly cheer — but sometimes jeer — Sergio Moro when he goes into restaurants. Concert-goers break into applause when performers point him out in the audience. Tourists are bused in to gawk at the office where he works in the Parana state capital of Curitiba.
Many Brazilians see the 44-year-old judge as a hero who is cleaning up a nation plagued by corruption, while critics accuse him of unfairly targeting figures from the leftist Workers Party government that led the country from 2003 until mid-2016.
Over the past three years, Moro has been instrumental in the so-called Car Wash probe that already has sent dozens of top businessmen and politicians to jail and is still expanding.