By Ben Tavener
SAO PAULO
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Friday that she believed corruption at the country's scandal-hit oil company, Petrobras, could have been halted if investigations had been ordered in the 1990s.
"If, in 1996 and 1997, they had investigated and handed down punishments at that time, there would not have been the case whereby this member of Petrobras staff engaged in acts of corruption for over 20 years," Rousseff told reporters in Brasília.
During the period referred to by Rousseff, the PSDB party -- now the main opposition in Brazilian politics -- was in power under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Rousseff's Workers' Party (PT) swept to power in 2003, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking the helm as president.
The member of staff to whom Rousseff alluded to in her comments is Augusta Mendonça -- an executive at Toyo Setal, a Brazilian petroleum industry and shipbuilding company. Mendonça has given evidence to Operation Lava Jato, or Car Wash, a police taskforce charged with investigating allegations of mass corruption at Petroleo Brasileiro SA -- as Petrobras, the country's biggest company, is formally known.
Aécio Neves, who narrowly lost last October's presidential election runoff, said that Rousseff's comments were an attempt to deflect responsibility.
"The president appears to want to mock Brazilians' intelligence by attributing the biggest corruption scandal in our history, which was sponsored by the PT government, to a government 15 years ago," he told reporters Friday, joking that the president was "living in a fantasy."
Once a jewel in Brazil's crown, Petrobras is now embroiled in a huge corruption scandal in which contracts with third parties, many of them major construction companies, were artificially bloated.
Investigators say the difference was then pocketed as kickbacks by political figures, as well as contractors and Petrobras executives.
Mendonça is reported to have told police a "club" of contractors divided tenders between themselves in the 1990s. Prosecutors have separately spoken of their certainty that a cartel operated at the time.
The main focus of the investigation, however, has so far been the last decade, during which PT has led a broad ruling coalition.
But Rousseff said Friday that an investigation when Cardoso was in power could have unearthed the roots of the corruption. She also defended the current investigation into the case. "Today ... an investigation is under way like nothing ever seen before in Brazil."
She also continued to press for "individuals, not companies" to pay the price for the crimes committed.
The president's comments came as Brazil's public prosecutor on Friday filed several "misconduct actions" against companies and executives currently under investigation, and said it would be seeking $1.55 billion (4.47 billion reais) of misappropriated Petrobras funds, compensation and civil fines from the companies.
It is the first time enterprises, and not individuals, have been targeted by such court actions during the investigation.
The major construction and civil engineering companies named by the public prosecutor include OAS, Galvão Engenharia, Mendes Júnior, Engevix, Camargo Corrêa and Sanko-Sider.
The total amount of funds extorted from Petrobras is still unknown, but a recent preliminary estimate from Petrobras put losses at around $33 billion. Shortly after the estimate was leaked, Petrobras Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster resigned, with the company's board of directors tapping Aldemir Bendine, who headed the country's Banco do Brasil bank, to replace her.
