Brazil’s state-run oil company has said it will pay $2.95bn to settle a class action brought by investors in the United States.<\/p>\n
Petroleo Brasileiro SA, commonly known as Petrobras, said in a statement on Wednesday that the settlement would bring to an end a legal battle with investors claiming to have suffered losses as a result of a region-wide corruption scandal involving the oil giant.<\/p>\n
The company has been embroiled in the scandal for several years since an investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash uncovered that a number of companies were paying bribes to officials to secure contracts with Petrobras, and Brazilian construction giants Odebrecht and OAS.<\/p>\n
Petrobras said that the agreement “does not constitute any admission of wrongdoing or misconduct” by the company, which claims also to have suffered from the corruption scheme.<\/p>\n
The oil giant proposed to pay the settlement in three instalments. The decision will need to be approved by a US judge.<\/p>\n
The settlement was lower than analysts predicted but, if approved, will be one of the largest securities class action settlements in the US.<\/p>\n
Since the scandal broke in 2014, dozens of senior politicians and high-ranking businessmen have been removed from their positions.<\/p>\n
In 2016, millions of Brazilians took to the streets to demand the removal and impeachment of then President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.<\/p>\n
The two Workers Party politicians were charged with racketeering for allegedly plotting to skim funds from Petrobras, despite no evidence linking Rousseff to the oil giant.<\/p>\n
Rousseff and others have speculated that her impeachment was politically motivated as she refused to stop Operation Car Wash or protect politicians from being investigated.<\/p>\n
Lula remains Brazil’s most popular politician and the favourite to win the presidency in the general elections in 2018.<\/p>\n
A Brazilian court will decide on Lula’s appeal against his corruption conviction on January 24.<\/p>\n
If denied, he may be barred from politics and unable to reclaim the presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brazil’s state-run oil company has said it will pay $2.95bn to settle a class action brought by investors in the United States. Petroleo Brasileiro SA, commonly known as Petrobras, said in a statement on Wednesday that the settlement would bring to an end a legal battle with investors claiming to have suffered losses as a result of a region-wide corruption… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1217,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}