Petrobras Wants Part of Settlement -- WSJ
December 24 2016 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Rogerio Jelmayer and Samantha Pearson
SÃO PAULO -- Brazilian oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, or
Petrobras, plans to request part of the record anticorruption
settlement that construction company Odebrecht SA signed earlier
this week with Brazilian, U.S. and Swiss authorities.
Petrobras has said it was the victim of the vast bid-rigging and
kickbacks scheme that Odebrecht admitted to helping run.
Investigators say the graft ring, which included a group of
builders, cost Brazilian taxpayers and Petrobras shareholders an
estimated $13 billion.
After months of negotiations, Odebrecht agreed Wednesday to pay
between $2.6 billion and $4.5 billion to Brazilian, U.S. and Swiss
authorities over 23 years, according to the U.S. Department of
Justice, which had brought suit against the firm under the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act.
"We're looking for ways to reimburse shareholders and the
[Brazilian] government," Petrobras's director of governance, risk
management and compliance, João Elek, told The Wall Street Journal
late Thursday. "Petrobras will make an effort to recover the part
that's fair."
In addition to Odebrecht's fine, the largest anticorruption
settlement in history, the company's petrochemicals subsidiary,
Braskem SA, agreed to pay $957 million.
It is "extremely difficult" to calculate how much Petrobras
should be entitled to, and the company has a team of people
preparing to show authorities how the final value was reached, Mr.
Elek added, saying Petrobras would soon send them the
information.
The record settlement deal has reverberated across Latin
America, where Odebrecht admitted to paying around $800 million in
bribes since 2001 in 10 countries in the region, as well as in
Angola and Mozambique.
Petrobras praised Wednesday's deal as an "important step," but
Mr. Elek said the construction company won't be allowed to do
business with Petrobras until further conditions have been met.
Odebrecht would have to prove it has introduced measures to
guarantee it won't engage in such practices in the future before
Petrobras allows the construction company to bid again for
contracts at the state-controlled oil company, Mr. Elek said
without providing further details.
For much of the past decade, Brazil's largest construction
companies conspired with politicians and Petrobras executives to
skim billions of dollars off inflated contracts, using the funds to
get rich, buy the silence of those involved and finance political
campaigns, according to Brazil's authorities.
Brazil's prosecutors and police have estimated Petrobras lost a
total of 42 billion reais ($12.8 billion) in the scheme that cost
the Rio de Janeiro-based company its investment-grade credit rating
and helped turn it into the world's most heavily indebted listed
energy company.
Write to Rogerio Jelmayer at rogerio.jelmayer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 24, 2016 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
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