Legislative capture — with a Caribbean tan

According to a Federal Police report sent to the Supreme Court, a federal tax auditor at the Catarina Executive Airport in the São Paulo city of São Roque waved through five pieces of luggage without an X-ray scan, after the pilot of a private jet stepped around the screening gantry to retrieve them. 

The pilot worked for Fernando “Fernandin OIG” Oliveira Lima, a Piauí entrepreneur whose One Internet Group operates online betting platforms, including the franchise behind Fortune Tiger, the slot game so ubiquitous in Brazilian advertising that it became shorthand for the country's gambling boom (which has, for its part, turbo charged Brazil's indebtedness crisis). 

On board the Gulfstream jet were the House speaker, Hugo Motta of the Republicans party, Senator Ciro Nogueira of the Progressives, and two congressional party leaders. The plane was returning from Sint Maarten, the tax haven sometimes called the Las Vegas of the Caribbean.