Pemex-Odebrecht contract irregularities spotted

Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Administration (SFP) has found MXN 119 million (USD 6.72 million) worth of irregularities in a Tula refinery work contract signed between Pemex and Brazilian engineering heavyweight Odebrecht, the anti-corruption agency said in a press statement on Monday.

The secretariat has identified the involvement of an unnamed employee of the state-owned company’s refining arm, Pemex Transformacíon Industrial. Consequently, the SFP has initiated disciplinary proceedings “without prejudging the probable administrative responsibility, which will be determined once the legal phases of due process have been exhausted,” the statement read.

The SFP’s investigation began in December 2016.

In August, former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya Austin was accused of accepting USD 10 million in bribes from Odebrecht between 2012 and 2016 in exchange for a USD 115-million Tula refinery contract. Lozoya Austin has denied the allegations.

Odebrecht has been mired in a multinational corruption scandal stemming from Brazil’s Operation Carwash probe, which began in 2014. The company has since been implicated in bribery cases in countries including Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala and Argentina, as well as Angola and Mozambique.