Here are some relevant events in South America where in there is a question in

ethics related to government.

1. Peru in turmoil after President Vizcarra dissolves Congress.

Peru has been thrown into political crisis after President Martín Vizcarra made
good on a threat to dissolve Congress unless lawmakers backed his anti-corruption
reforms. Opposition lawmakers, who are in the majority in Congress, said the
dissolution amounted to a coup d'etat. They suspended Mr Vizcarra and swore in
Vice-President Mercedes Aráoz as acting leader. Meanwhile, Mr Vizcarra decreed
that fresh elections be held on 26 January. Mr Vizcarra and Ms Aráoz each claim to
be the legitimate leader of Peru. Mr Vizcarra argued that his move to dissolve
Congress was constitutional, but opposition lawmakers said it was dictatorial and
have refused to leave the building. A majority of 86 out of 130 members of Congress
then voted in favour of suspending Mr Vizcarra for a year. They also declared Ms
Aráoz acting president. Ms Aráoz said she was "temporarily assuming the presidency
of the Republic". But a government source said the vote and swearing-in of Ms Aráoz
were null and void because they had occurred after Congress had been dissolved.
The heads of the armed forces and the police have thrown their weight behind Mr
Vizcarra, releasing statements saying that they recognised him as the constitutional
president and commander-in-chief. The presidency's press office also published a
photo showing the commanders of the army, navy, air force and the police attending
a meeting chaired by Mr Vizcarra at the presidential palace in Lima. Thousands of
people also gathered outside the Congress building to show their support for Mr
Vizcarra. But opposition lawmakers said Mr Vizcarra overstepped his powers when
he dissolved the democratically elected Congress. They called his move
unconstitutional and him a dictator. They sang the national anthem and refused to
leave Congress while pledging their loyalty to Vice-President Aráoz. The stand-off
between opposition members of Congress and Mr Vizcarra is likely to continue over
the coming days with Congress planning to meet again on Friday to vote on a motion
to dismiss President Vizcarra altogether. Mr Vizcarra has issued a decree setting
parliamentary elections for 26 January. "This exceptional measure will permit the
citizenry to finally express themselves and define, at the polls and through their
participation, the future of our country," he said. Meanwhile, a legal battle is expected
to kick off to determine if the dissolution of Congress was constitutional or not. Mr
Vizcarra was sworn in in March 2018 after his running mate and then-President Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski resigned over a vote-buying scandal. He said he would fight graft
head-on, which endeared him to Peruvians tired of endless corruption scandals that
have tainted not only Mr Kuczynski but also the three previous Peruvian presidents.
Mr Vizcarra says Congress, which is dominated by the right-wing Popular Force party
led by Keiko Fujimori, blocked him from passing a raft of anti-corruption measures.
Ms Fujimori, the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, is in jail awaiting trial
for allegedly accepting illegal funds from Odebrecht. Mr Vizcarra accused her party
of trying to shield itself from corruption investigations by obstructing his reforms. "The
parliamentary majority resorts to innumerable arguments and tricks, destined to harm
not just government but society as a whole," he said in a televised address. He also
argued that Congress's appointment of a new judge to the constitutional court would
interfere with his efforts to stamp out corruption. Among other things, the court is soon
due to decide whether to free Keiko Fujimori from pre-trial detention.

2. Odebrecht case: Politicians worldwide suspected in bribery scandal

It is the corruption probe that has left politicians around the world looking over
their shoulders. Prosecutors in a dozen countries are untangling a massive web of
corruption that ran across a continent and further afield. Illegal payments may have
sloshed through presidential campaigns, boosted the careers of political top brass in
country after country, and oiled the wheels of worldwide construction projects
including motorways, gas pipelines and hydroelectric dams. If you have never heard
of a company called Odebrecht, you probably do not live in Latin America. It is a
Brazilian construction giant behind venues for the 2016 Olympics, infrastructure for
the 2014 World Cup and the metro system in Caracas, plus dams and airport
terminals further afield. But anti-corruption investigators caught up with the company,
and it admitted paying bribes in more than half of the countries in Latin America, as
well as in Angola and Mozambique in Africa. Odebrecht played a game of quid pro
quo: I will help you pay for your election campaign if you make sure I get that building
contract. In country after country, it is alleged that Odebrecht employees made
connections with those in power and those who looked like they would be getting into
power soon. They did not restrict themselves to those of any particular political hue.
Almost a third of Brazil's government ministers who served under former president,
Michel Temer, have faced investigation, including his foreign minister and chief of
staff. The predecessor of current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who was arrested
and released in a separate corruption case last month, is facing investigation in
relation to Odebrecht. He denied all allegations of corruption and accused the
country's judiciary of heeding rumours and destroying reputations. The vice-president
of Ecuador, Jorge Glas, became the highest-ranking government official to be
convicted in the scandal when he was sentenced in December 2017 to six years in
jail. Prosecutors said he took $13.5m (£10.2m) in bribes from Odebrecht.
Colombia charged a former vice-minister for transport and a former senator.
The man who ran the election campaign of the former president, Juan Manuel Santos,
has alleged it was financed with irregular Odebrecht payments. Mr Santos, who is a
Nobel Peace Prize winner, said he did not authorise any payments or know about
them.
Next door in Venezuela, former chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega has fled the
country after being sacked. She alleges that President Nicolás Maduro is implicated
and that a top court is blocking an investigation. Odebrecht has denied her other
allegation - that they paid $100m (£76.5m) to the socialist party's vice-president,
Diosdado Cabello. Venezuela has taken unfinished projects away from Odebrecht
and blocked the company's bank accounts.
In Peru, four ex-presidents have been placed under investigation. Ollanta
Humala and his wife Nadine Herediaare are facing potentially lengthy prison
sentences for allegedly receiving payments to fund his presidential campaigns in
2006 and 2011.Alan García, who served as president from 1985 to 1990 and again
from 2006 to 2011, killed himself with a bullet to the head on April 17 as police came
to arrest him over claims he took bribes from Odebrecht. Former President Alejandro
Toledo, accused of taking $20m in bribes, is thought to be living in the US and the
Peruvian government has put up a $30,000 reward for information leading to his
arrest. Staying with Peru, opposition leader Keiko Fujimori has come under
preliminary investigation. The attorney general says a note found on Marcelo
Odebrecht's mobile phone implicates her. She denied receiving money from the
company.
Panama charged 17 people including government officials, and charged
Odebrecht $59m in compensation. A lawyer from Mossack Fonseca - the firm at the
centre of the Panama Papers leak - accused President Juan Carlos Varela of
receiving Odebrecht donations. Mr Varela denies all wrongdoing.
Mexico summoned a former director of state oil company Pemex and other
employees to give evidence over alleged Odebrecht bribes, while the Dominican
Republic asked Odebrecht for $184m compensation over the next eight years.
Chile started an investigation and seized documents from the Odebrecht
offices, while the firm agreed to pay Guatemala $17.9m in compensation for bribes
paid to an official for public work, the attorney general's office said in January.
And Brazilian newspaper O Globo reports (in Portuguese) that 29 countries,
including Sweden, the US, France and the UK asked Brazil for help with their own
Odebrecht investigations.
Ecuador's vice-president Jorge Glas is serving a six-year term after he was
convicted of taking $13.5m (£10.2m) in bribes from the firm. Former CEO Marcelo
Odebrecht started a 19-year jail term in 2016 after being convicted of paying more
than $30m (£21m) in bribes to officials in Brazil's state oil company in exchange for
contracts and influence.
More than 70 other Odebrecht executives were jailed but have agreed to plea
deals, that is they agreed to provide information in exchange for more lenient
sentences. Some are already out of jail and serving their sentences at home. The
epicentre of the operation had a much more run-of-the-mill name, the Division of
Structured Operations, but it was essentially the bribery department. Employees
spent their time bribing government officials and political parties at home and abroad,
to win business.nThe company has admitted this to US, Brazilian and Swiss
prosecutors. Money went through as many as four bank accounts in countries with
good banking secrecy laws before getting to a recipient, usually an intermediary to
someone with political power. When the department's employees wanted to
communicate, they used a system unconnected to the main computer systems, to
avoid detection. And they gave their recipients flippant codenames: Dracula,
Sauerkraut, Decrepit, Totally Ugly. One politician, whose wife was 40 years younger
than him, got the codename Viagra.

3. Brazil corruption scandals

Since 2014 Brazil has been gripped by a scandal that started with a state-
owned oil company and grew to encapsulate people at the very top of business - and
even presidents. On the face of it, it is a straightforward corruption scandal - albeit
one involving millions of dollars in kickbacks and more than 80 politicians and
members of the business elite. But as the tentacles of the investigation dubbed
Operation Car Wash fanned out, other scandals emerged. It has led to some of those
who have found themselves accused claiming they are the victims of political plots,
designed to bar them from office. But what is this scandal all about? And who is it
said to involve? Operation Car Wash began in March 2014 as an investigation into
allegations that executives at the state oil company Petrobras had accepted bribes
from construction firms in return for awarding them contracts at inflated prices. Which
is bad enough - but then the Workers' Party found itself dragged into the corruption
scandal amid allegations of having funnelled some of these funds to pay off politicians
and buy their votes and help with political campaigns. Among those accused in the
scandal were dozens of politicians, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - the country's
extremely popular former president, known affectionately as "Lula". Three years after
the investigation began, Lula was found guilty of the first of five charges against him:
that he had been given a beachfront apartment by engineering firm OAS in return for
his help in winning contracts with Petrobras. Lula has been sentenced to 12 years in
prison - and began his sentence on 7 April with the judges ruling he should not be
free during the appeals process. But Lula, who denies all charges, says the
investigation and trial were politically motivated to prevent him from running for
president again in the next election. Lula isn't the only one to have held the presidency
to face investigation right now: the two people who followed in his footsteps are facing
corruption allegations of their own. The attorney general has charged current
President Michel Temer - the former vice-president who took office in August last year
- with receiving money from the boss of giant meatpacking firm JBS, which itself is
already implicated in a corruption scandal. The charges have been delivered to a
Supreme Court judge who must now decide if the case can be sent to the lower house
of parliament, which will decide whether or not to lift his presidential immunity. Mr
Temer denies all charges. And then there are the separate allegations which saw his
predecessor Dilma Rousseff - who followed Lula into office after he had served two
terms - impeached in August 2016. Entirely separate to the Operation Car Wash
allegations, Ms Rousseff - a close ally of Lula - found herself in trouble for allegedly
moving funds between government budgets, which is illegal under Brazilian law. She
argued this was common practice among presidents, but her critics said she was
trying to plug deficit holes in popular social programmes to boost her chances of being
re-elected in 2014. Ms Rousseff fought the allegations, arguing that her right-wing
rivals had been trying to remove her from office ever since her re-election. But she
lost - and her vice-president, Mr Temer, of the centre-right PMDB party, was put in
charge until January 2019, when the president to be elected in a vote next year will
take office. However, Ms Rousseff's supporters do posit another theory when it comes
to her fall from grace: they allege that the politician's rivals wanted her gone because
she would not shield them from the Car Wash probe.

4. Venezuela is engulfed in a political crisis with two rival politicians claiming

to be the country's legitimate leader.
 Venezuela has been governed for the past 20 years by the socialist PSUV
party. From 1999 to his death in 2013, Hugo Chávez was president. He was
succeeded by Nicolás Maduro, who narrowly defeated the opposition candidate in
elections. During its time in power, the PSUV has managed to gain control of many
key institutions including much of the judiciary, the electoral council and the supreme
court. When opposition parties gained a majority in the legislature, the National
Assembly, President Maduro created a rival body - made up exclusively of
government supporters - the powers of which supersede those of the National
Assembly. During his time in office, Venezuela's economy collapsed and shortages
of food and medicines became widespread. In May 2018, Mr Maduro was re-elected
to a second term in elections which have widely been dismissed as rigged. He was
sworn in on 10 January. At the prospect of another six years of Maduro government
and with the economy in freefall, the head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó,
declared himself interim president on 23 January. Mr Guaidó argues that Mr Maduro
is a "usurper" and that the presidency is therefore vacant, in which case the
constitution calls for the head of the National Assembly to step in. The US and more
than 50 other countries have recognised Mr Guaidó as the legitimate leader of
Venezuela but Mr Maduro's key allies, Russia and China, have stuck by the latter.
The two sides have been locked in a stand-off since January with Mr Guaidó trying
to sway the military, a key player in the country, to switch its allegiance. On 30 April,
he called on the security forces to join him in the "final phase" of the removal from
power of Mr Maduro, a move the government said was "an attempted coup".