COLOMBIAN prosecutors said yesterday they had charged dozens of people in connection with the globe-spanning corruption scandal at Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Between 2009 and 2016, the company bribed public officials with 80 billion pesos (RM89.86 million) to win a contract to build a 528km road between the centre of the country and the Caribbean coast, prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors said 55 people, including a group of 22 former company managers and lobbyists as well as 33 former government officials, had been charged in connection to the scandal.

The company’s former president, Marcelo Odebrecht, was among those charged.

Unlike other Latin American countries, Colombia has not tried any high-ranking government officials in the Odebrecht scheme, one of the biggest foreign bribery cases in history. 

An international arrest warrant had been issued for senior Brazilian Odebrecht executives Eder Paolo Ferracuti, Amilton Hideaki and Marcio Marangonni, prosecutors said. 

The executives had already been charged in March 2021 as part of the scandal.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday asked prosecutors to “reopen” their cases, asking for help from Brazil and the United States to punish the masterminds behind the scandal.

Petro said that prosecutors had “allowed” Odebrecht executives to leave the country so that they would not denounce the politicians who received the bribes. 

“We know who they bribed… who were the intermediaries. But we don’t know where the money went, because it went to those with political power”, said Petro.

Prosecutors also claimed that Odebrecht had contributed US$800,000 (RM3.7 million) to the campaign of former president Juan Manuel Santos, although he was not included in the list of defendants released yesterday.

Luis Fernando Andrade, the former director of the state-run National Infrastructure Agency was among those charged.

Andrade, a former civil servant and the most senior on the list, fled to the United States in 2018, accusing prosecutors of persecution.

In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay US$3.5 billion in penalties in Brazil, the United States and Switzerland arising out of payments of more than US$788 million in bribes to foreign leaders and government officials in order to win infrastructure projects. – AFP, August 18, 2023.