Brazilian prosecutors are investigating text messages from an engineering executive that may show President Dilma Rousseff’s chief of staff favored construction firms that donated to his party while he was state governor, the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported on Thursday.
A separate set of messages from the same executive may indicate Aldemir Bendine, chief executive of state-run oil firm Petrobras, participated in a “supposedly illegal” debenture scheme to raise money for engineering firm OAS when he led the state-run Banco do Brasil, the report said.
Both sets of messages are being analyzed by federal prosecutors, said the paper, which had access to the documents.
Neither Bendine nor Rousseff’s Chief of Staff Jacques Wagner, who was governor of Bahia state at the time of the messages, have been charged with wrongdoing.
Wagner issued a statement criticizing the leak and said his political activity had always been based exclusively on the interests of Brazil and Bahia.
Investigators are tackling Brazil’s largest-ever corruption scandal that has ensnared dozens of politicians, many of whom are aligned with Rousseff’s Workers’ Party.
Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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