Brazil’s federal auditing court TCU ordered on Wednesday the seizure of about 2.1 billion reais ($655 million) worth of assets from engineering firms Odebrecht SA and OAS SA and some of their executives, to recoup losses from contracts related to the country’s biggest ever corruption scandal.
Brasilia-based TCU said in a ruling that the decision aims to recover some of the money that state-controlled oil company Petróleo Brasileiro overpaid for services rendered by Odebrecht and OAS in two works at the Abreu e Lima refinery. The scheme drove up the cost of those works by 25 percent, TCU said.
The former chief executive and scion of Odebrecht SA, Marcelo Bahia Odebrecht, and his former counterpart at OAS, José Adelmário “Leo” Pinheiro, had some of their assets seized, as well as those for four more executives at both firms. The decision also affected José Sérgio Gabrielli, the former CEO of Petrobras, the state oil company.
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