CONSTANCA REZENDE
BRASILIA, DF (FOLHAPRESS)
Odebrecht sent a statement to the STF (Supreme Federal Court), this Tuesday (26), asking that the company continue to enjoy all the rights and guarantees provided for in its leniency agreement.
The request was made 20 days after Minister Dias Toffoli’s decision that considered the evidence arising from the company’s leniency agreement, signed within the scope of Operation Lava Jato, useless.
The contractor, which was renamed Novonor, requests that, even so, the benefits established in the agreement be maintained, in any scope or degree of jurisdiction, regardless of the declaration of unreliability of the evidence and the resulting legal consequences.
The 33-page document sent to the STF is signed by lawyers Rodrigo de Bittencourt Mudrovitsch and Victor Santos Rufino.
They maintain that “there is no doubt that any alteration or dissolution, in whole or in part, of agreements to which Novonor and its former executives are signatories or adherents, without maintaining the entire preservation guarantees set out in them, could have consequences unpredictable and incalculable to the group”.
They also argue that the possibility of suffering new actions of impropriety, sanctions and measures of unavailability of assets represent “a serious violation of legal security and a profound disincentive to the conclusion of leniency and plea bargain agreements”.
Furthermore, they state that the action could cause irreparable damage and, ultimately, “lead to premature and disorderly interruption of contracted works, layoffs, loss of tax revenue and other associated risks.”
Leniency is a type of plea bargain for a legal entity. It allows the company to maintain contracts with public authorities.
In his decision on the 6th, Toffoli ordered the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba to present the full content of all documents and annexes related to the agreement, including those received abroad, under penalty of incurring the crime of disobedience.
The minister invalidated the company’s evidence of the complaint on the grounds that it was improperly transported at the time of the negotiation and that there was informal cooperation between Brazil and foreign authorities.
After the arrest of Marcelo Odebrecht, in 2015, and being the target of a sequence of Lava Jato phases, Odebrecht management decided to collaborate with the operation authorities.
At the end of 2016, the business conglomerate reached a commitment in which it acknowledged the payment of US$788 million in bribes in 12 countries in Latin America and Africa, including Brazil.
Brazilian, Swiss and American authorities participated in the negotiation.
The following year, the content of the statements became public, with reports that implicated more than a hundred politicians from the most varied persuasions.
The Odebrecht agreement was signed in 2016 in parallel with the denunciations of 77 executives from the construction company, in an initiative that had international repercussions.
Among the participants in the agreement were the company’s former president Marcelo Odebrecht and his father, Emílio Odebrecht – both convicted in the operation.
In the agreement approved in 2017 by the then Lava Jato judge Sergio Moro, the business group agreed to pay a compensation fine of R$3.8 billion, in 23 annual installments, corrected by the Selic rate. At the time, a total of around R$8.5 billion was estimated at the end of the payment.
In 2018, the company signed a new term of adherence to a leniency agreement signed with the Ministry of Transparency and the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union), related to Eletrobras. In this case, the contractor committed to paying R$162 million to the energy company to compensate it for irregularities in the construction of the Santo Antônio and Belo Monte hydroelectric plants, in the North region.
The post Odebrecht asks the STF to maintain agreement benefits after Toffoli annulled evidence appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
Source link
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS