Reuters/Sao Paulo
Denmark’s shipping and oil group AP Moller-Maersk said one of its employees in Brazil received a request from authorities last month to provide additional information for a corruption investigation at state-run oil firm Petrobras.
Prosecutors say Maersk, which first met with Brazilian investigators in July 2014, is one of more than a dozen foreign companies being investigated for possibly paying bribes to former executives at Petrobras and several companies are collaborating with the investigation.
A Maersk spokesman said in a statement to Reuters the employee received the request on August 10 and its external legal counsel is working with authorities to respond.
The company says it has actively sought and willingly provided information to Brazilian federal authorities and has found no evidence that it engaged in any improper or illegal activity.
Maersk has argued that it is normal and customary to use brokers to promote tanker-operators’ services to customers around the world and to pay brokers a 1.25% commission on earnings from charter contracts.
Prosecutors in the southern city of Curitiba, the epicenter of Brazil’s largest-ever corruption investigation, did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday concerning the Maersk inquiry.
Petrobras, known formally as Petroleo Brasileiro SA, employs Maersk drilling rigs, offshore vessels, tankers and gas carriers.
Evidence gathered against two leading members of Brazil’s ruling Workers Party in the Petrobras graft scandal is sufficient for them to face criminal charges, police said Tuesday.
Prosecutors now must review the evidence against Jose Dirceu and Joao Vaccari and decide on charges against them and 12 others, police sources said.
Prosecutors suspect Dirceu, a former cabinet chief under ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and a cofounder of the leftist party known as PT, of having masterminded the operation.
The alleged scheme skimmed billions of dollars from the state oil giant and sent the money to political parties, and people’s private accounts.
Police also said evidence shows that Vaccari — who was arrested when he was treasurer of the Workers Party, and has already been charged in connection with the scandal — actively and passively engaged in corruption, money laundering and racketeering.
Lula was in office from 2003 to 2010 and was the country’s first democratically elected leftist leader.
He spent generously on social programmes to reduce the number of Brazilians living in poverty and the economy boomed to the world’s seventh largest.
On his heels, President Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected, but her popularity is at a staggering low eight percent, with the economy in recession and her government rocked by corruption scandals.
Rousseff herself has not been accused, but she chaired the board at Petrobras between 2003 and 2010, when much of the alleged corruption was flourishing.
Prosecutors estimate that $2.1bn in bribes were paid as part of the scheme.
Lula is being investigated in an unrelated influence-peddling probe, but has not been charged.
Brazil’s largest oil workers’ union advised Petroleo Brasileiro SA that it plans to begin an open-ended strike against the state-run oil company starting at midnight (0300 GMT) on Friday.
The strike is in protest at a recent cut of about 40% in investments by Petrobras, as the company is commonly known, and the planned sale of about $15.1bn of assets, the union, known as FUP, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The cut in the company’s five-year investment plan to $130bn from $221bn comes in the wake of a plunge in oil prices and a corruption scandal that forced the company to write down about $17bn of assets in 2014.
FUP did not mention any specific salary or work-condition demands.
The union is against any sale of Petrobras assets and would like to see the company, currently owned by both government and non-government investors, to be 100% owned by Brazil’s government.
President Rousseff during news conference at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia yesterday.
