Odebrecht's corruption scandal

Odebrecht, Latin America's largest construction conglomerate, built a dedicated internal division — investigators later called it the 'Department of Bribery' — that systematically paid kickbacks to win public infrastructure contracts across Brazil and much of the rest of the region. As part of Brazil's wider Operation Car Wash investigation, Odebrecht admitted in a December 2016 plea agreement with US, Brazilian and Swiss authorities to paying approximately $788 million in bribes across at least twelve countries in Latin America and Africa between 2001 and 2016, in exchange for contracts worth billions more than the bribes themselves. The company agreed to pay a combined penalty of roughly $2.6 billion, at the time the largest foreign-bribery settlement in history, and the fallout implicated sitting and former presidents in Peru, Panama, Ecuador and elsewhere, several of whom faced prosecution or resignation as a result. Odebrecht itself filed for bankruptcy protection in Brazil in 2019 as the scale of penalties, lost contracts and reputational damage overwhelmed the business, and the case became a defining symbol of how deeply corruption had penetrated public contracting across Latin America.