No one disputes the fact that Odebrecht, one of the largest and most successful civil engineering groups in Brazil and Latin America, has paid bribes, or that it has done so on a massive scale. The disagreements now are about matters of detail, although the details themselves are critically important, including questions as to the number of politicians and other officials implicated. Also up for discussion is the much wider question of corporate governance and regulation, critically, the question as to what should be done to prevent other large companies from indulging in similar practices in future
Introduction
One of the most authoritative accounts of the scale Odebrecht’s illegal activities is the case filed in the US District Court in Brooklyn in December 2016, where the company formally admitted to having paid US$788m worth of bribes in Brazil and 11 other countries, which helped it to win over 100 separate contracts that collectively generated US$3.3bn worth of profits for the group. As part of that case, Odebrecht in a plea bargain deal agreed to pay US$3.5bn worth of fines to authorities in Brazil, the US and Switzerland. The settlement was widely described as the largest-ever corruption fine levied against a corporate entity, anywhere in the world. Significantly, the runner-up in that ranking of notoriety is also Brazilian, the meat and foodstuffs conglomerate JBS, which in May 2017 agreed to pay a US$3.16bn fine for making corrupt payments in the country.