Petrobas director in corruption spotlight

A former director of Petrobras, Brazil’s largest company and the largest oil group in Latin America, is being investigated for bribery.

Brazilian federal prosecutors have accused Paulo Roberto Costa of receiving kickbacks from construction companies but have not named them or revealed the size of the alleged payments.

They made the accusations after obtaining eleven search warrants to gather evidence against Costa, who was the refining and fuel director of state-owned Petrobras until 2012.

The accusations follow Costa’s arrest in March during a money laundering investigation known as Operation Car Wash.
The police said then that Costa was involved in illegal transactions amounting to $4.52bn (£2.78bn, €3.5bn) with an unnamed Brazilian currency broker and some unnamed politicians when Petrobras was buying a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, for $1.7bn.

At the same time they investigated transactions worth $20bn involved in Petrobras’s refinery near Recife, Brazil.
A separate Congressional inquiry is being conducted into allegations of excessive spending by Petrobras at its refineries and overpaying for the Pasadena plant.

As part of the present Brazilian action a court is considering freezing the assets of the Petrobras chief executive Maria das Graças Foster.

In response to the wave of investigations and allegations, the Brazilian state president Dilma Roussef, who was chairwoman of Petrobras during the Pasadena purchase, said the company and its managers were victims of political gamesmanship.