Corruption in Brazil exists on all levels of society from the top echelons of political power to the smallest municipalities. Operation Car Wash showed central government members using the prerogatives of their public office for rent-seeking activities, ranging from political support to siphoning funds from state-owned corporation for personal gain. The Mensalão scandal for example used taxpayer funds to pay monthly allowances to members of congress from other political parties in return for their support and votes in congress. Politicians also used the state-owned and state-run oil company Petrobras to raise hundreds of millions of reais for political campaigns and personal enrichment.

Corruption was cited among many issues that provoked the 2013 protests. Corruption directly affects the welfare of citizens by decreasing public investments in health, education, infrastructure, security, housing, among other rights essential to life, and hurts the Constitution by expanding social exclusion and economic inequality.

Studies by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) from 2009 estimate that the Brazilian economy loses from corruption, every year, from one to four percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the equivalent of one value over 30 billion reais. The following year, a study by the Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (Fiesp) found that the annual cost of corruption in the country is 1.38 percent to 2.3 percent of the GDP. In 2013, a study by the Industry National Confederation showed that each real misappropriated by corruption represents a damage to the economy and society of three reais.

According to the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International, in 2025, Brazil was placed in 107 out of 182 countries.

The "Brazilian way" is seen as a practice of "small corruptions", such as evading taxes, stealing cable TV signals, jumping the queue, simulating or concealing business, among others.

All types of corruption exist. Clientilism, cronyism, and nepotism are widespread in Brazil, and many critics note that members of the Brazilian Supreme Court openly mingle with politicians. Bribery (Portuguese: propina or suborno) is also rife throughout the Brazilian bureaucracy. But one of the most common types of corruption in Brazil is embezzlement of public funds through overbilling, called superfaturamento in Portuguese (literally "super invoicing"). This technique allows individuals to enrich themselves, and also finance political campaigns (as seen in the Petrobras scandal), and is closely linked to public contracts with private enterprises. Construction contracts to build roads, sewage, and public buildings are frequently involved. An estimated 30% of all Brazilian public funds are embezzled this way each year.

Fernando Filgueiras writes: tolerance to corruption is not a deviation of the Brazilian character, a propensity and cult of immorality, not even a situation of cordiality, but a practical disposition born of a culture in which preferences are limited to a context of needs, representing a survival strategy that occurs through the material issue. According to Raymundo Faoro, corruption is a "vice" inherited from the Iberian world, the result of a patrimonialist relationship between government and society.

The scale of corruption in Brazil is immense, but largely under-reported in the media and historically not investigated, prosecuted or punished, so it is difficult to estimate just how large the problem is. The Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigation may have changed this. Corruption in Brazil increases the already enormous Brazilian shadow economy, which some sources estimate at 16.1% of the gross domestic product, a number that probably needs to be adjusted up considerably if corruption as such is included as part of the shadow economy.