Investigators with Brazil’s Finance Ministry say they have identified as much as US$16 billion worth of suspicious activity that may be part of a kickback scandal engulfing the state-owned oil company Petrobras.
Brazil's oil and gas corporation Petrobras on Friday signed with PetroRio S.A. (‘PetroRio’) the contracts for the sale of 20% of its stake in the concessions of Bijupirá and Salema fields, currently operated by Shell. The transaction amounts to US$ 25 million and is subject to adjustments that are common to this type of operation.
Brazilian police on Thursday arrested Jorge Zelada, former director of Petrobras' international division, as part of an ongoing investigation into bribery and corruption at the state-run oil producer, prosecutors have said. Zelada is suspected of money-laundering, appropriating public funds, corruption, tax evasion and contract fraud.
State-controlled oil giant Petrobras, which is mired in a corruption scandal that has rocked Brazil, said Monday it was cutting investment by 37% during the 2015-2019 period. Investment during the period will now total $130.3 billion, down from the $220.6 billion originally planned, Petrobras said in a filing with the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange.
Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras urged a U.S. judge on Thursday to throw out an investors' class action lawsuit claiming a multibillion-dollar bribery scandal overvalued it for years. Speaking at a hearing in federal court in New York, Petrobras lawyer Roger Cooper said the company itself was a victim of the fraud, which he said was orchestrated by a handful of individuals.
Brazilian police arrested on Friday Marcelo Odebrecht, the head of Latin America's largest engineering and construction company Odebrecht SA, ensnaring the most high-profile executive to date in the corruption investigation at state-run oil firm Petrobras.
Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras said that the 13.7bn dollars divestment program it unveiled two months ago does not include plans to sell a stake in its service station network.
A Brazilian judge has sentenced a former international director at the country's largest corporation and government managed Petrobras to five years in prison for money laundering, the second company executive convicted in an ongoing corruption probe.
Brazil´s main opposition party plans to pursue a criminal complaint against President Dilma Rousseff for 'inventive' accounting that helped shore up the country´s fiscal results in recent years.
Beijing has come to the rescue of Brazil's slumping economy with trade, finance and investment deals worth at least 53 billion dollars in energy, mining, aviation and upgrading of dilapidated infrastructure.