Odebrecht boss denied bail as bribes abroad surface

NEW INCRIMINATING evidence of including elements that reinforce the relationship between the Norberto Odebrecht company and the payment of bribes abroad, led to a new detention order against Marcelo Odebrecht and four other leaders of the company on Friday, July 24.

 Judge Sergio Moro, a Brazil federal criminal court judge and responsible for investigating the case of corruption in Petrobras said: “In the course of research elements that reinforced the relationship between Odebrecht and the payment of bribes abroad emerged,” said the judge in his decision.
This week, prosecutors in Switzerland included Odebrecht in investigations that the Prosecutor carried out to clarify the corruption in Petrobras, Brazil’s largest company and responsible for a significant portion of GDP.
The Swiss prosecutor confirmed the existence of evidence of payment of kickbacks by Odebrecht executives of the company and requested Brazil’s cooperation in the investigation.
Marcelo Odebrecht has been in prison since last June 19 along with four other leaders of the firm and Otavio Azevedo, president of Andrade Gutierrez, another important construction companies in the country.
The judge declared that Marcelo Odebrecht “is able to interfere” in research, through the elimination of evidence, witnesses pressure or political interference, while stressing the possibility of leakage to outside of the investigation.
Odebrecht, like twenty other companies in the country, is being investigated for alleged involvement in a vast network of corruption entrenched in Petrobras, which seized illegally during the last decade of about two billion dollars, according to estimates by the company itself .
A report by the O Globo newspaper says that the company used six accounts in Switzerland for allegedly paying $17 million in bribes to executives of the state oil company Petrobras.
“Between 2006 and 2011, those accounts had deposits of $ 17 million for five officers of the state, through direct off-shore transfers in other countries,” says research O Globo citing prosecutors in Brazil.
Among offshore companies cited by the report is South Constructora Internacional, incorporated in Panama, where “would have been paid $3,014,000 to four Petrobras executives The evidence of these payments were presented yesterday by the Public Ministry of Brazil. The judge who took them into account in denying Odebrecht’s request for bail.