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REPORT: Brazil’s Oil Giant Petrobras Over Paid for Contracts by Nearly $2 Billion
Excessive payments on contracts for refineries and other projects by Brazilian state-controlled oil giant Petrobras may have amounted to nearly 3 billion reais ($1.17 billion), the head of an office investigating the alleged irregularities said.
That total includes alleged irregular overpayments for construction of the Comperj petrochemical complex in Rio de Janeiro state and the Abreu e Lima (Pernambuco), Duque de Caxias (Rio de Janeiro) and Getulio Vargas (Parana) refineries, as well as the purportedly high cost of acquiring a refinery in the U.S. city of Pasadena, Texas.
n a lunch Tuesday with Brazilian reporters, the president of the TCU tribunal, Augusto Nardes, said the irregularities are the “biggest scandal” his body has ever investigated.
He said there are “indications” the alleged irregular overpayments amounted to 3 billion reais but added that the TCU ministers still must determine the precise amount.
Nearly half of the total, some 1.6 billion reais (nearly $585 million) corresponds to losses sustained in the purchase of the Pasadena refinery in 2006. The TCU says the amount of overpayment in that instance has already been verified.
Petrobras acquired a 50 percent stake in that refinery for $360 million from Astra Holding USA, a unit of Belgium’s NPM/CNP that a year earlier had paid $42.5 million for the entire facility.
Due to a put option in the contract, Petrobras was required to acquire the remaining 50 percent and ended up paying $820 million for that stake after a protracted legal battle with Astra.
Nardes’s comments come two months after the jailed former director of Petrobras’ refining and supply unit, Paulo Roberto Costa, implicated dozens of politicians in an alleged bribery scheme.
Costa, who has reached a plea deal with prosecutors after confessing to orchestrating the scheme, said that dozens of politicians received commissions on contracts that Petrobras signed with construction firms between 2004 and 2012.
Published in Latino Daily News
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