Brazil’s biggest construction company has said it will co-operate with anti-corruption investigators in a move that sent further shock waves through the country’s crisis-stricken political system.
Salvador-based family conglomerate Odebrecht has already been deeply implicated in the probe into political graft at state-controlled oil giant Petrobras. However, despite receiving long jail terms, its president Marcelo Odebrecht and other senior executives had resisted cutting plea-bargain deals with prosecutors.
That stance changed on Tuesday. Another round of police raids on the company’s premises produced evidence of a parallel accounting system to manage the web of bribes Odebrecht paid to politicians in return for public works contracts. This included a file detailing illicit payments to 200 politicians, investigators said.
As well as being Petrobras’ biggest contractor, Odebrecht is also involved in the construction of roads, dams, ports and airports. Its contracts for World Cup and Olympic projects are also now under investigation.
Embattled president
Odebrecht testimony could be particularly damaging for embattled president
Dilma Rousseff
as any more evidence of graft by her ruling Workers’ Party would risk undermining her already troubled efforts to fight off an impeachment motion making its way through congress.
The company developed a particularly intimate relationship with her mentor and predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with its revenues increasing six-fold following the the Workers’ Party elevation to power in 2003.
But the plea-bargain agreement has serious implications for broader swathes of Brazil’s political class as Odebrecht also has long standing ties with the opposition.
Indicating that its executives’ testimony would implicate politicians, Odebrecht’s note announcing its decision to co-operate admitted the Petrobras inquiry: “reveals in truth the existence of an illegal and illegitimate system of financing the party-electoral system in the country”.
Shift responsibility
The firm sought to shift responsibility for the scheme onto the politicians by claiming Odebrecht did not have “dominant responsibility” for the facts uncovered by the Petrobras investigation.
Prosecutors have already uncovered undeclared offshore payments made by Odebrecht to the marketing executive who oversaw Rousseff successful 2014 re-election campaign. Any evidence that the cash was stolen from Petrobras could lead the country’s top electoral court to cancel the president’s mandate.
Mrs Rousseff, who denies all wrongdoing, made her most trenchant attack yet on efforts to oust her during a gathering of jurists opposed to her removal in Brasília on Tuesday. "In this situation, half-words will not do. What is under way here is a coup against democracy," she said, adding that she has no intention of resigning.
Later, her attorney general José Eduardo Cardozo said that even if Mrs Rousseff had broken fiscal laws, as claimed by the impeachment motion, this would not constitute the “crime of responsibility” necessary to justify a president’s removal.
