Corruption Scandals With Brazilian Roots Cascade Across Latin America
Roberto Prieto, Mr. Santos’s campaign manager, said in a statement last week he had not met Mr. Bula, "not even for a coffee." Investigators are also looking
into dealings involving other politicians’ campaigns, including Oscar Iván Zuluaga, a right-wing candidate for president in the 2014 election.
Yet she called it a positive development for the region, showing "the anticorruption movement in Latin America is gaining ground." Perhaps the most spectacular case so far involves Alejandro Toledo, the president of Peru from 2001 to 2006,
and a wanted man since a judge last week issued an arrest warrant on charges that he had accepted up to $35 million in bribes.
Mr. Bula is currently under arrest on charges of having paid about $4.6 million in bribes for various projects in Colombia,
including a road linking the country’s interior to the Magdalena River and Caribbean highway known as the Ruta del Sol.
It can all be traced back to Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction company, which has built major projects throughout the region
and late last year settled with the United States, Brazil and Switzerland for up to $4.5 billion under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for an elaborate bribe scheme involving $800 million in payoffs in exchange for lucrative contracts.
If Mr. Toledo is apprehended and convicted, he would be the second Peruvian president behind bars,
after Alberto K. Fujimori, the country’s former dictator who was convicted of human rights abuses.
On Saturday, two researchers from Transparency International
and two Brazilian journalists were arrested by Venezuelan intelligence agents while looking into an unfinished bridge Odebrecht was meant to construct over Lake Maracaibo, one of the company’s biggest projects.
