MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras 'suspicious' activities could involve as much as 16bn dollars

Rodrigues told a congressional committee that the “suspicious movement of 51.9 billion Reales in operations linked to Petrobras” had been detected

Investigators with Brazil’s Finance Ministry say they have identified as much as US$16 billion worth of suspicious activity that may be part of a kickback scandal engulfing the state-owned oil company Petrobras.

 On Tuesday, Antonio Gustavo Rodrigues, head of the ministry’s financial intelligence unit (COAF), told a congressional committee the unit had detected the “suspicious movement of 51.9 billion Reales in operations linked to Petrobras.” That’s equivalent to over US$16 billion.

The financial value, he said, is an approximation, given the complexity of the analyzed transactions. The statements have raised questions about the extent of the corruption scandal in Petrobras. As part of the investigation, the federal police were sent 267 reports of financial transactions involving 27,579 people.

Rodrigues said police and prosecutors must now determine if the suspicious actions were in fact illegal.

Investigators say Brazil’s top construction and engineering companies paid bribes to a handful of Petrobras’ politically appointed executives in return for inflated contracts. Prosecutors have alleged that some of the money then flowed into the campaign coffers of the governing Workers’ Party (PT) and its allies, which they deny.

However, one of the prosecutors in charge of the investigation, Carlos Fernando Santos Lima, said last week that the Petrobras estimate is conservative and there is no doubt that the losses are higher than the US$2.1 billion dollars calculated by the oil company.

The popularity of President Antonio Gustavo Rodrigues, has suffered in consequence because as minister of Mines and Energy and as chief of staff she directed Petrobras’s Administrative Board from 2003 to 2010, a period that encompasses the investigations.