18 people, including top company executives were arrested after Brazilian police conducted a series of raids in major Brazilian companies as part of an investigation over alleged corruption issues of state-run oil company Petrobas.
Petrobas is Brazil's biggest company and oversees tapping big offshore oil fields and generating funds that will be used to boost the country to developed world status.
However, Petrobas has been rocked by allegations of corruption and money laundering by a former executive Paulo Roberto Costa, saying that executives from Brazil's biggest construction companies were accused of using money from publicly owned Petrobas oil to fund their political campaigns.
Because of the incident, investigations and raids, called "Operation Car Wash" on some of Brazil's biggest private construction companies, enterprises that are consistently among the top donors to political campaigns were being scrutinized by authorities.
Now, police are directly targeting them for allegedly making illegal kickbacks worth exponentially more than the legal campaign contributions. The case fuels widespread belief among Brazilians that their political system is rife with corruption, especially when it comes to big infrastructure works and state-controlled companies.
Renato Duque, Petrobas' former director of services was one of those that were arrested; Duque was detained Friday after devising the kickback scheme and conniving with other Brazilian executives.
Back in 2013, millions of Brazilians protested against the government's corrupt practices and siphoning off funds from much needed public services.
Police arrested and took boxes of documents and froze bank accounts of top executives during the raids on the offices of industrial engineering firm UTC and Iesa Oil and Gas and builders OAS and Queiroz Galvao.
Alberto Youssef, a convicted black-market money launderer, told the authorities that he knew about the Petrobas kickback scheme and how Brazilian executives benefited from it.
Youssef is spilling the beans in order to receive a lighter sentence. He claims that recently elected President Dilma Rousseff, who chaired Petrobas from 2013 until she ran for presidency in 2010, was also knowledgeable about the kickbacks.
Rousseff admitted to knowing about the company's wrongdoings and has even promised to try to reimburse Brazilians for the public money that was taken.
