MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian major contractor admits guilt in Petrobras' massive corruption scheme

Camargo Correa agreed to pay 104m-Reais ($30 million) fine, the biggest agreed with Cade by a company accused of colluding to inflate Petrobras contracts.

Camargo Correa Construcoes e Participacoes, one of Brazil's largest construction companies, has admitted its role in a massive scheme to overcharge state-controlled oil company Petrobras and agreed to cooperate in the investigation as part of a leniency deal, anti-trust agency Cade said Wednesday.

 In exchange for assurances that an administrative probe will be dropped, as well as other benefits, Camargo Correa agreed to pay a 104-million-Reais ($30 million) fine, the biggest agreed with Cade thus far by a company accused of colluding to inflate the cost of Petrobras contracts.

In a statement, Camargo Correa said it will cooperate in the investigation, provide documents that incriminate other companies and offer information about how the bid-rigging cartel operated.

Two other builders accused of skimming money from Petrobras, Setal Engenharia and SOG Oleo e Gas, signed leniency deals with the anti-trust agency in March.

The companies that have admitted guilt say Brazil's largest construction and engineering firms: Andrade Gutierrez, Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão and UTC Engenharia, also formed part of the cartel.

The wide-ranging scandal involves allegations that Petrobras suppliers overcharged the oil giant for contracts, splitting the extra money with corrupt Petrobras officials while setting aside some of the loot to pay off politicians who provided cover for the graft.

Petrobras, which earlier this year announced plans to slash its investment budget and divest assets, in April wrote off over $2 billion in losses stemming from inflated contracts and other costs related to the corruption scheme, which ran from 2004 to 2012.

Dozens of business executives and politicians, many of them from the governing coalition, have been implicated in the graft scandal.

Those executives include Camargo Correa's former CEO, Dalton dos Santos Avancini; the company's ex-vice president, Eduardo Hermelio Leite; and its erstwhile chairman, João Ricardo Auler, who were convicted last month on charges of bribery, money laundering and submitting fraudulent bids for contracts from Petrobras.

Avancini and Leite each received a sentence of 15 years and 10 months of house arrest as part of a plea deal. Auler, who did not agree to a plea deal with prosecutors, was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison.