Reuters
Exclusive: Brazil bribery probe expands to four JPMorgan fuel deals -documents and sources
A Brazilian police investigation of alleged bribery of Petrobras employees to fix the price of fuel sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co by the state-run oil firm has expanded from one deal to at least four over the course of 2011, according to documents and two law enforcement officials. Previously unreported invoices related to fuel sale agreements between the two companies show one of the alleged intermediaries in the bribery scheme, known as Oil & Gas Venture Capital Corp (OGVC), received approximately $150,000 that year from another alleged intermediary named EGR Consultants to facilitate the purchase of roughly 826,000 barrels of fuel oil by JPMorgan, worth more than $80 million at the time. The additional invoices are significant as Brazilian police have been working to determine if a 305,000-barrel JPMorgan deal facilitated by OGVC and EGR was a one-time arrangement or part of a pattern, which would raise the stakes of the investigation, according to two law enforcement sources in Brazil, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe.
