Half a million anti-government protesters are said to turn out in São Paulo. March 13, 2015. Photo: Radio Interativa / CC 2.0. Brazil has gone into a freefall in the past three weeks, with events unfolding so quickly that spending so much as a moment offline risks missing out the latest explosive news. The turbulence started earlier this month when federal police brought in Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president between 2003 and 2010, for questioning. Next, sitting president Dilma Rouseff appointed Lula her chief of staff, in what appears to be a move to shield him against prosecution. “Operation Lava Jato”—a wide-ranging investigation into a graft scheme involving the state-run oil company Petrobras and several large construction companies—has led to the arrests of more than a dozen politicians since 2014. Now prosecutors are investigating whether Lula received favors from the companies implicated in the scheme. After his arrest on March 4, Lula was released without formal charges. Following Lula’s appointment, Sergio Moro, the judge in charge of Operation Lava Jato (“Lava Jato” means “Car Wash”), released to the public nearly 50 tapes of phone conversations between Lula and his allies. The most explosive of these records is a phone call with Dilma that took place only hours before the tapes were released. In the call, the president offered to send Lula a copy of his appointment “in case of necessity,” which some have interpreted to mean “in case he needed it to avoid arrest.” Another tape shows Lula attempting to influence Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber. Judge Moro has become a central public figure in Brazil and many speak of him as a folk hero. Others, however, accuse him of partisanship, questioning whether he crossed a line by releasing the tapes. Making Judge Moro into an idol contradicts a virtue he's supposed to represent: the impersonality of institutions. pic.twitter.com/UdZaslh68M — Alex Cuadros (@alexcuadros) March 4, 2016 Internet users found the social media accounts of one of the judges who filed a motion against Lula's appointment. He deleted the accounts, but screenshots of his posts supporting anti-government protests spread quickly online. Image: Facebook (widely circulated) Lula's appointment has also prompted a judicial war, with the Supreme Court receiving 13 motions to revoke his nomination. One of the judges who filed a motion gained fame online after Internet users found social media accounts where he had posted photos of himself attending an anti-government rally and speaking openly against the Workers’ Party (the party of Dilma and Lula). A preliminary ruling by Brazil's Supreme Court has frozen Lula's nomination. A final decision on his appointment is expected next week. Dilma Rouseff hasn’t been officially implicated in Operation Lava Jato, but the Brazilian National Congress has opened impeachment proceedings against her, on the grounds that she manipulated government accounts to hide a growing deficit. There's no consensus that this constitutes a legal basis on which to impeach a president, and many accuse Congress of using the country's current political turmoil to pursue partisan aims. Simultaneously, Brazil’s electoral court will soon issue a ruling about possible irregularities in Dilma's 2010 and 2014 election campaigns. A ruling against Dilma would unseat her and her vice president, forcing new snap elections. One of the most comprehensive corruption investigations in Brazilian history, Operation Lava Jato started in 2009 as a probe into a money-laundering scheme involving a local politician from Paraná, a state in the south of Brazil. By 2014, the investigation had uncovered a massive corruption scandal within Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, involving politicians from numerous parties and the country’s biggest construction companies. Under the scheme, top Petrobras officials and a cartel of companies conspired to overcharge the oil company for construction and service work. The extra cash benefited companies and Petrobras executives, who often shared the money with lobbyists and political figures (to whom many Petrobras executives owe their jobs). The company has had 10 billion dollars in financial losses because of the scheme, according to estimates by the Federal Police. So far, 93 people have been condemned in the investigation, including high-profile politicians and owners of construction companies. Lula speaks to a crowd of 100,000 people in São Paulo on March 18. Photo: Agência Brasil, CC 3.0. Construction companies implicated in the Petrobras corruption scheme have renovated two properties allegedly owned by Lula: a beachfront apartment and a country retreat.