Brazil police targets Odebrecht in new anti-corruption raid

[March 22, 2016]  BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian federal police were seeking to arrest 15 people on Tuesday as part of the corruption investigation centered on state-run oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, police and federal prosecutors said.

Tuesday's operation, codenamed "Xepa", uncovered a bribe-payment scheme led by Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL], Latin America's largest engineering and construction conglomerate, police said in a statement.

It is the 26th raid in the two-year-old corruption probe that has put top executives and political leaders in jail and has raised chances of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in coming months.

Odebrecht and other major engineering and construction companies have had a high profile in the graft and influence-peddling scandal at Petrobras known as "Operation Car Wash."

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors said police uncovered evidence that Odebrecht used a so-called structured operations division to coordinate bribe payments in a systematic way.

The structure, embedded into Odebrecht business model, is evidence that former chief executive Marcelo Odebrecht, sentenced to 19 years in prison, was aware and in charge of the illegal payments, the prosecutors said in a statement.

"At least 14 executives at different parts of Grupo Odebrecht sent several requests of 'parallel payments' to members of that specific structure," according to the note. "This evidence opens a whole new line of investigation about bribe payments at many public works."

Representatives of Odebrecht did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the police raids.

Prosecutors have accused Odebrecht of paying bribes to win multibillion-dollar contracts with Petrobras in a scheme that also funneled money to finance political campaigns of ruling and opposition parties.

The Petrobras scandal has plunged Brazil into a deep political crisis at a time when it is also grappling with economic recession and an epidemic of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, and preparing to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in less than five months.

(Reporting by Silvio Cascione, Editing by Angus MacSwan and W Simon)

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