Brazil expands Olympics corruption probe
Brazilian investigators have expanded their probe into possible corruption around the staging of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro this August to include all venues and services financed with federal funds, a lead prosecutor says.
Rio state officials have acknowledged a genuine cleanup of Guanabara Bay will take 20 years, with the city still pouring at least half of its untreated sewage into its surrounding waters. Photo: Silvia Izquierdo, AP.
Federal investigations have previously focused on “legacy” modernisation projects not directly tied to the Games but this newly disclosed probe includes Olympic Park and the Deodoro area where Olympic venues are located, federal prosecutor Leandro Mitidieri said.
“It’s not just the physical works we’re looking at – it is contracts for services, security, everything that used federal funds,” he told Reuters from his Rio de Janeiro office.
The Olympics were meant to showcase Brazil’s rise as a global power. Instead, they will take place as suspended President Dilma Rousseff faces an impeachment trial, the economy suffers its worst recession since the 1930s, an outbreak of the Zika virus prompts health concerns and a massive corruption scandal infuriates Brazilians.
Mitidieri said his team is also investigating what happened to federal funds earmarked for cleaning Guanabara Bay, where Olympic sailing events will take place, and lakes that surround the main Olympic venues in western Rio’s Barra neighbourhood.
Those bodies of water have heavy sewage contamination and remain badly polluted despite promises to drastically improve them as a legacy achievement of the Olympics.
Another team of federal prosecutors, along with federal police, is investigating whether Rio’s state water utility company Cedae committed environmental crimes by not properly treating sewage in Rio’s metropolitan area of 12 million people, Mitidieri said.
Five construction firms are building most of the 39 billion reais ($US10.8 billion) worth of venues and infrastructure needed for Rio’s Olympics. The figure includes at least 1.76 billion reais in federal funds, according to documents from Brazil’s federal accounting court.
Federal authorities have already said they are investigating the Porto Maravilha project, an 8 billion real facelift of Rio’s dilapidated port area, and also the expansion of the city’s metro line to the Olympic area in Barra.
Court files made public in March showed police uncovered documents from executives of Latin America’s largest construction firm, Odebrecht SA, that referenced 1 million reais in suspected bribes connected to those two big legacy projects.
Rio de Janeiro’s city government oversees most Olympic construction projects, though a few are financed by the federal or state government. The city government says contracts were mostly funded with private resources and that all bids were overseen by regulators.
The mayor’s office said it would not comment without knowing what exact contracts were under investigation. It added that all contracts were carried out in a transparent manner and that city officials were prepared to provide any clarifications necessary.
-Reuters
