Judicial footdragging in bribery probe
THE Odebrecht bribery scandal continues to make waves across Latin America as a plane carrying a judge investigating the Lavo Jato (car wash) corruption case in Brazil, died in a plane crash on Thursday, January 19.
Meanwhile, not only Panama authorities appear to be dragging their feet in following up against local politicians who have received scores of millions in bribes according to a confession from the Brazilian construction giant.
Peru’s AntiCorruption Prosecutor Amado Enco has called for the judiciary to speed up investigations into the corruption and bribery network operated by Odebrecht.
The company obtained 23 public contracts in Peru worth at least $16.94 billion between 1998 and 2015, of which 16 have been audited over the years.
Authorities are investigating the alleged payment of bribes totaling $29 million.
Enco is “worried that the time will come that concrete and objective measures will not be taken in these investigations.”
He said that the law empowers prosecutors to carry out seizures, searches and the lifting of banking secrecy.
“They are indispensable acts that should be carried out now, in an urgent way,” he told the station Ideeleradio.
The attorney added that the agency “will be at the back of the inquiries, demanding that the corresponding authorities, and the judiciary, act quickly to hand out punishments.”
Peru has banned Odebrecht from receiving further state contracts.
Dominican Republic
The Attorney General’s Office of the Dominican Republic seized at least 20 boxes with
documents during a raid on the Odebrecht offices,
The raid on Wednesday lasted approximately six hours, sat Dominican media reports.
The Attorney General’s Office said that the search wascarried out after comparing the information provided by Odebrecht’s representatives in the country with data obtained through intelligence work, according to Listín Diario.
Before conducting the raids, investigators again interrogated businessman Ángel Rondón, the commercial representative of Odebrecht in the Caribbean country.
Rondón has insisted that the money he received was not used for illegal payments or bribes.
Odebrecht admitted paying bribes of about $92 million.
Panama banks
Colombia appears to have been fastest off the mark with the arrests of two former senior officials.
The Attorney General’s Office reported that Odebrecht paid bribe using bank accounts in Panama and Andorra.
“Odebrecht created a structural relations office Through which accounts for bribe payments were manipulated and from that office came the $11 million that reached accounts in Panama and the Principality of Andorra “according to documents of the Office of the Prosecutor Seen by RCN news..
The Colombian Public Prosecutor’s Office is following the payment route.
Gabriel García Morales, who was deputy minister of Transportation in the
Government of President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) was arrested at the beginning of January and accused of receiving a bribe of $6.5 million in 2009, presumably for favoring Odebrecht for a highway contract.
As part of the diligence carried out, experts traced the bearer shares that would have been used to move money for bribes and the identity of the people involved, according to the Colombian daily El Tiempo.
Colombian authorities also arrested ex-senator Otto Nicolás Bula, accused of receiving $4.6 milion
Odebrecht pleaded guilty last December in a US court for violating anti-bribery rules, as a result of the Lavo Jato investigation into a complex network of corruption between
2001 and 2016, which paid about $439 million to political parties, foreign officials and their representatives in several Latin American countries.
