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Brasilia - A former Petrobras executive at the centre of an alleged multibillion-dollar graft scheme involving the state-run oil company said that similar bribery and kickback schemes were prevalent in many Brazilian public-infrastructure projects.
The March arrest of the executive, Paulo Roberto Costa, helped uncover a scheme that allegedly used inflated Petrobras contracts for refineries and other projects to funnel money to politicians through leading construction companies.
Costa said at a congressional hearing the practice extends beyond Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is formally known.
"What has been reported occurring at Petrobras happens all over Brazil in contracts for roads, railways, ports, airports and hydro-electric dams," Costa said.
Come under scrutiny
The case is sharpening Brazilian political divisions only weeks after President Dilma Rousseff won re-election in the country's closest vote in decades. Rousseff, chairperson of Petrobras' board of directors from 2003 to 2010 when many of the alleged bribes and kickbacks happened, has denied involvement in the corruption scheme.
Political parties have dominated all high-level appointments at Petrobras, including his own, for decades, Costa said.
Prosecutors last month began probing other state-run companies after dozens of construction and engineering firm executives were arrested on 14 November in relation to the Petrobras case.
"This scheme is not restricted to Petrobras," said Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, a lead prosecutor in the case.
Lima declined to name companies, but state-run Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, Latin America's largest utility, is expected to be the next company to come under scrutiny.
