Brazil police arrest dozens in anti-graft raids

BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazilian police arrested dozens of suspects in a massive anti-corruption sweep across the country on Tuesday, March 22, targeting what they called a “professional” bribe-paying network at construction giant Odebrecht.

Federal police said they had uncovered a parallel accounting system at Odebrecht that oversaw the company’s involvement in what investigators say is a multi-billion-dollar corruption scheme centered on state oil company Petrobras.

The scandal, in which dozens of powerful politicians have been implicated, has upended Brazilian politics and is threatening President Dilma Rousseff’s government.

Odebrecht, one of the largest construction groups in Latin America, had a “professional and institutionalized” system for bribery, federal police spokeswoman Renata Rodriguez told journalists in the southern city of Curitiba, where the Petrobras probe is based.

Police said they carried out raids in 9 states to execute 43 arrest warrants or temporary detention orders.

Investigators accuse Odebrecht of colluding with competitors to divvy up Petrobras contracts over the course of a decade, paying huge bribes and then inflating the contracts by even larger amounts.

One of the projects for which Odebrecht allegedly paid a bribe was the stadium that hosted the opening match of the 2014 World Cup.

Former chief executive Marcelo Odebrecht was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison earlier this month.

“He not only knew about the bribes, he directed the payments” even after being detained in June, prosecutor Laura Tessler said.

Some 380 officers took part in Tuesday’s operation.

The suspects are accused of corruption, racketeering and money laundering, police said.

Investigators say the ruling Workers’ Party was directly involved in the Petrobras scheme, which the company estimates cost it more than $2 billion.

Several executives at Petrobras and some of Brazil’s largest companies have already received heavy prison sentences, and 34 lawmakers are under investigation, including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rousseff’s predecessor and mentor.

Rousseff, who chaired Petrobras during much of the period under investigation, has not been charged.

But a senator charged in the scandal caused a firestorm last weekend when he said she “knew everything” about the scheme and used some of the proceeds to fund her presidential campaigns in 2010 and 2014. – Rappler.com