SAO PAULO — Brazilian builder Andrade Gutierrez will confess to paying bribes for 2014 FIFA World Cup contracts and business with state-run companies Petrobras and Eletrobras, a newspaper report said Friday.
Andrade Gutierrez agreed with Brazil's prosecutor-general and other investigators to pay a fine of 1 billion reais ($270 million) in a plea deal covering the company and its executives, the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper said. The paper did not say how it obtained the information.
Brazil's biggest corruption investigation ever has seen some of the country's most powerful politicians and businessmen jailed over the past two years, but shed little light so far on the soaring costs of a dozen World Cup stadiums.
Andrade Gutierrez, which declined to comment, built the Amazonia Arena in Manaus and worked on the reform of venues in Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and the capital Brasilia.
The cost of those construction projects jumped from 2.5 billion reais in early estimates to a final outlay of 3.4 billion reais, according to Contas Abertas, a group that monitors public spending.
Cost overruns and opaque decision-making in the run-up to last year's World Cup triggered an unprecedented wave of public protests in 2013, bringing more than a million Brazilians to the streets to protest corruption and poor public services.
The protests catalyzed public outrage over Brazil's history of graft just as a team of investigators uncovered evidence of a vast price-fixing and political kickback scheme surrounding the state-run oil company known as Petroleo Brasileiro SA.
The probe has since exposed signs of bribery on massive hydroelectric dams and a nuclear plant run by electric utility Eletrobras, or Centrais Eletrais Brasileiras SA, and a series of other public works, and seen the jailing of dozens of executives and lawmakers.
The federal prosecutors' office declined to comment on the report and police did not respond to requests for comment. — Reuters
