Novonor

Norberto Odebrecht Construtora Ltda., the privately owned precursor to Odebrecht S.A, was founded in 1944 by Norberto Odebrecht. In the late 1970s and early 80s, Odebrecht began to expand internationally and diversify its business. In 1980, CBPO, another Brazilian contractor, merged with Odebrecht, and in 1981, Odebrecht S.A. was created. In 2002, Odebrecht established Braskem, a petrochemical company that went on to become Latin America's largest. In 2007, Odebrecht Agroindustrial was established to produce ethanol, sugar, and energy.

Legal problems

The Treasurer of the Brazilian Workers' Party, João Vaccari Neto, was arrested in 2015 for allegedly receiving "irregular donations", and José Dirceu, former chief of staff for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was arrested for orchestrating a large part of the scandal, also in 2015.

Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Congress of Brazil) Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-RJ), was investigated for allegedly receiving more than US$40 million in kickbacks and bribes. He was imprisoned in October 2016 and his accounts frozen. Former Minister of Mines and Energy Edison Lobão (PMDB) was investigated for receiving more than US$50 million in bribes from Petrobras and arrested 19 October 2016 and held in custody due to what the justice department of Paraná state called "a concrete possibility of flight given his access to hidden resources abroad, as well as double nationality."

In February 2016, amidst the Peruvian presidential race, a report from the Brazilian Federal Police implicated Peruvian president Ollanta Humala as a recipient of bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for public works contracts. Humala rejected the accusation and avoided any confrontation with the media on the matter. Under the Humala administration Odebrecht received contracts worth US$152 million, in addition to the $7.3 billion Southern Gas Pipeline project and $60 million in contracts with regional governments in Peru.

On 4 March 2016, then former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was detained and questioned as part of a huge fraud inquiry into the state oil company Petrobras after his house was raided by federal police agents. Lula, who left office in 2011, denied allegations of corruption. The long-running inquiry known as Operation Car Wash, probed accusations of corruption and money laundering at Petrobras. Dozens of executives and politicians were arrested or investigated on suspicion of overcharging on contracts with Petrobras and kicking back part of the money for bribes and electoral campaign donations. Police said they had evidence that Lula, 70, received illicit benefits from the kickback scheme. Lula's institute said in a statement that "violence" against the former president was "arbitrary, illegal and unjustifiable", as he had been co-operating with the investigations. Lula was charged with money laundering and corruption and after his appeal was unsuccessful was arrested in 2018. He would later be released in November 2019 by a Supreme Federal Court ruling.

According to a 2021 study, "Odebrecht paid bribes for two reasons: to tailor the terms of the auction in its favor, as well as to obtain favorable terms in contract renegotiations. In projects where Odebrecht paid bribes, costs increased by 70.8 percent on average, compared with 5.6 percent for projects with no bribes. We also find that bribes and profits made from bribing were smaller than documented in most previous studies, in the range of one to two percent of the cost of a project."

Antigua and Barbuda

They run RPA SU MADR at the Executives running Odebrecht's bribery division secretly bought a majority share of Meinl Bank and used it to transfer funds to politicians' offshore accounts. Prime Minister Gaston Browne denied receiving a bribe from Odebrecht in January 2016.