sept 9
Petroleo Brasileiro Petrobras SA (ADR) (NYSE:PBR) tumbled 5.31% on Monday on news about a police investigation into alleged payments to government officials. The administration of Brazilian Pres. Dilma Rousseff cited information leaked to local media from a police investigation into alleged kickbacks involving the state-run company.
Bloomberg reports “Veja magazine reported this weekend that a group of politicians, including members and allies of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, were allegedly receiving bribes linked to Petrobras contracts. The Sao Paulo-based magazine said the list of names allegedly involved were revealed by Paulo Roberto Costa, Petrobras’s former head of refining, during testimony to the federal public prosecutor.”
The accusations made by Costa are being used “to try, somewhat desperately, to change the course of the campaign,” Secretary General Gilberto Carvalho said in an interview broadcast on the website of news channel G1.
Latest about this scandal was that Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4) requested access to allegations made by a former executive of a kickbacks scheme involving the state-run oil producer in a scandal that threatens to influence the outcome of presidential elections. Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, asked the judge investigating the so-called Car Wash money-laundering case for details of testimony given by former refining head Paulo Roberto Costa, it said yesterday in a statement. The oil producer also wrote to companies cited by Brazilian press as allegedly involved in kickbacks, Petrobras said, without identifying them.