Thursday 22 December 2016

Brazil’s gargantuan corruption scandal goes global

THE bribery affair centred on Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, has already shaken that country. The petrolão (“big oily”), as the scandal is known, has landed bosses of its largest construction conglomerates in jail and helped topple Brazil’s president. Now it is causing earthquakes abroad.

On December 21st America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) reached a $3.5bn settlement with Odebrecht, Brazil’s biggest builder, and with Braskem, a petrochemical joint venture between that firm and Petrobras. The DoJ alleges that since 2001 Odebrecht and Braskem paid $788m in bribes to officials and political parties in Brazil and in 11 other countries. Most of these are in Latin America. They include Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina and the Dominican Republic (see chart). Two Portuguese-speaking African countries—Angola and Mozambique—are also on the list.

The payoffs brought...Continue reading

from Americas http://ift.tt/2ig7yjR
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment