One October night in 2011 in Milan, Italy, a group of four Brazilian businessmen linked to Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil operator, sat down for dinner with the manager of a Swiss bank, Banque Cramer.
On the menu for the Brazilians was allegedly a plan to create one of the most ambitious corruption schemes their country had seen.
The men were plotting to divert nearly 1 per cent of $22bn in contracts held by Sete Brasil, one of the world’s largest drilling rig companies that was being set up by Petrobras, into their own accounts and those of political contacts, alleges one of the participants at the dinner, Pedro José Barusco Filho. They were meeting the banker to discuss opening offshore accounts for the money, the former Petrobras and Sete Brasil executive said. There was no suggestion Banque Cramer was party to the scheme.