Yesterday, Tuesday, 8 March 2016, a Brazilian judge sentenced Marcelo Odebrecht, the former chief executive officer of the biggest construction company in South America, to 19 years in prison for his involvement in a corruption scandal centered on Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras.
Odebrecht was convicted of money laundering, corruption and organized crime.
Prosecutors claimed that some of Brazil’s largest construction firms, including Odebrecht, skimmed billions of dollars from Petrobras through inflated contracts, then channeled some of the funds to the ruling Workers’ Party and its allies. Officials are now trying to establish whether other international leaders may also have been “persuaded” to award contracts to Odebrecht SA, and a series of big infrastructure deals made between 2011 and 2014, which Odebrecht won with nations including Ghana, Angola, the Dominican Republic and Cuba are under scrutiny.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/odebrecht-ex-ceo-sentenced-to-19-years-in-prison-1457449835
