Brazilian police near the border with Paraguay have exchanged gunfire with members of a gang who carried out what Paraguayan officials are calling the robbery of the century. So far three gang members were killed and two injured in the clash, police say. The number of robbers involved and display of weapons has led authorities to believe it is a one of Brazil largest criminal gangs.
President Michel Temer insists that a growing corruption scandal in his government will not paralyze Brazil as it struggles to emerge from its deepest recession in history. “Brazil doesn’t stop,” he said in an interview broadcast on Spanish television TVE ahead of a visit Monday by Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. “So it won’t be corrupt acts that paralyze the country.”
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy arrived in Brazil on Sunday on an official two-day visit during which he will meet with President Michel Temer and follow a markedly economic agenda, including Mercosur and current ongoing talks with the EU in Brussels. The second leg of the trip will take Rajoy to Uruguay.
Economic activity in Brazil grew in February at the fastest pace since January 2010, a central bank indicator showed this week, in the strongest sign yet that Latin America's largest economy is emerging from a two-year recession. Bumper harvests are expected to have lifted agricultural production in the first quarter of the year, while industrial output improved on a pickup in car exports.
Brazilian President Michel Temer on Tuesday made new concessions to ease passage of an unpopular pension reform bill, leading police unions to try and invade Congress in the latest angry demonstration from a labor group.
A United States judge on Monday sentenced Brazilian engineering company Odebrecht SA to pay US$2.6 billion in fines in a massive criminal corruption case, signing off on a plea deal between the company and U.S., Brazilian and Swiss authorities.
The Brazilian engineering group Odebrecht kept a secret communications system to discuss and arrange the payments of bribes. A detailed spreadsheet mapped out who got what, all veiled under a system of codenames, and overseeing it all, there was an entire department at Odebrecht whose only purpose was to ensure the graft ran smoothly.
Odebrecht SA , the Brazilian engineering company at the center of a historic corruption scandal, paid about US$3.3 billion in bribes over a nine-year period that ran through 2014, according to testimony cited by local media in Sao Paulo.
Brazil's Central Bank cut the key interest rate by a full one percentage point on Wednesday in an effort to inject life into the floundering economy. This was the fifth straight cut, taking the key Selic rate to 11.25%.
An institutional and political earthquake is shaking Brazil: the Supreme Court has opened corruption investigations into nine ministers, three governors, 24 senators, 39 members of the Lower House and other elected officials totaling at least 108 politicians, according to a report published on Tuesday by O Estado de Sao Paulo.