Odebrecht reneges on bribery debt payment
Once again, Odebrecht has breached the terms of the agreement to return $220 million to the Panamanian State, as a result of exchanging bribes with officials during the Ricardo Martinelli administration (2009-2014). From 2017 to date, Odebrecht has paid $52 million, reluctantly and only after the prosecution complained to a compliance judge.
As we go, history will repeat itself every year, because everything indicates that Odebrecht will do the same and will try to ignore the subsequent quotas. The authorities should consider a renegotiation with Odebrecht of the terms of the agreement, in order to make the payment of the debt with Panama effective, disposing of the company’s assets in this country, since it is not a question of a year of non-compliance, but of various. Simply, we should not expect that one fine day this company will tell us that it is bankrupt. With the main prosecutors of the case on vacation, those who remain are silent spectators: they do not take the initiative to fix a problem that can get worse. Hopefully, this new breach will wake up those responsible for collecting the money. – LA PRENSA, Mar.4.
