Brazil: 30th phase of Operation Car Wash targets new bribes
In its 30th phase, dubbed “Addiction” and launched jointly by the Federal Police and the Revenue Service today (May 24), Operation Car Wash is probing into the payment of over $11.2 million in bribes through fraudulent contracts between Petrobras and two pipe suppliers.
In a note, the Federal Prosecution Service in Curitiba explains that contracts forged between Petrobras and two of the pipe suppliers that paid illicit amounts in a bid to benefit from the state-run firm add up to over $1.4 billion. Evidence suggests that the bribery scheme ran from 2009 to 2013, with the illegal amounts paid, both in Brazil and abroad, surpassing $11.2 million.
Twenty search and seizure orders are being served, along with nine detentions for questioning in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Two preventive arrest warrants have also been executed, targeting executives Eduardo Aparecido de Meira and Flávio Henrique Macedo, members of Credencial Construtora Empreendimentos e Representações LTDA. The firm has been implicated as in the probes as a shell company used for transferring bribe money.
In a press conference aimed at outlining the new stage of the operation, Prosecutor-General Roberson Pozzobon, one of the members of the task force in the Car Wash probe, stated that former Chief of Staff José Dirceu and his brother Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira accepted $477 thousand in bribes. Former Petrobras Director Renato Duque was also mentioned as one of those who benefited from the amounts siphoned off the contracts.
Last week, Federal Judge Sérgio Moro, in charge of the operation, sentenced the former chief of staff to 23 years and three months in prison for the crimes of active corruption, money laundering, and criminal conspiracy. Dirceu should start serving the sentence with no permission to leave jail. The conviction may be appealed.
Renato Duque was convicted in two other criminal cases and his sentences add up to 50 years and 11 months of imprisonment.
According to the note, the new phase was named after the systematic, recurrent, and seemingly addictive corruption practices committed by certain Petrobras employees and public officials who do not seem to have worked by any means other than those harmful to the State.
The name chosen for the crackdown also refers to the idea that a number of sectors of the government should undergo a process of rehabilitation from their crooked ways of contracting, blatant in the actions of their representatives, the note adds.
Translated by Fabrício Ferreira
Fonte: Brazil: 30th phase of Operation Car Wash targets new bribes
