The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported on 25 June 2019 that Odebrecht’s bribery scandal is even more significant than the Brazilian construction company has acknowledged. It highlights that the bribes involve prominent figures and massive public works projects in Latin America that had not been mentioned in the criminal cases or other official inquiries to date. The leaked findings are part of more than 13,000 documents that had been stored by the Division of Structured Operations on a secret communications platform known as Drousys. The division was located in the Dominican Republic under the convicted Joao Santana, who also served as strategic political campaign consultant to President Danilo Medina.
The Drousys records were obtained by the Ecuadorian news organization La Posta and shared with ICIJ and its 17 media partners across the Americas.
Among the findings is more than US$39 million in secret Odebrecht payments made in connection with the Dominican Republic’s 752MW Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant. Dominican economist Andres Dauhajre, of the Economy and Development Foundation, is one of the first now linked to the Odebrecht corruption case in the Drousys platform findings. The files include many code names that have yet to be matched with the beneficiaries. In the case of Punta Catalina, this is mentioned as “thermo plant” in the files, and is the only thermoelectrical plant built by Odebrecht.
The Odebrecht-Technimont-Estrella consortium was awarded a contract of more than US$2 billion to build the power plant, hundreds of millions of dollars more than some of the bids by its sidelined competitors.
Carlos Pimentel, executive director of the Dominican anti-corruption group, Participación Ciudadana, told ICIJ that the graft associated with the Punta Catalina power plant and the inadequacy of the government’s response undermines the credibility of the country’s political institutions. “There is a system of complicity in the country for the enrichment of a minority, in the public and private sectors, based on the impoverishment of the majority,” Pimentel said. “That is what the Odebrecht case has left.”
In December 2016, Odebrecht admitted to the US Justice Department having paid more than US$788 million in bribes from 2001 to 2016, including US$92 million in the Dominican Republic.
27 June 2019