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The top prosecutors of Brazil and Argentina accused their governments of interfering in the effort to jointly investigate bribes by the Odebrecht engineering company.
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"The main authorities for international legal cooperation — Brazil's Justice Ministry and Argentina's Foreign Ministry — have placed obstacles and made requisitions that are an undue interference in carrying out agreements signed by prosecutors of the two countries in the Odebrecht investigation," Brazil's Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot and his Argentine counterpart Alejandra Gils Carbo said in a statement issued on Monday.
"We hope the central governments support our efforts and urgently remove the obstacles that have been imposed."
Janot said on Tuesday that the two countries had agreed in June to set up a task force to allow a simultaneous investigation of bribes paid by Odebrecht, but the joint effort has not taken off.
"The task force is an essential tool without which we cannot join forces regionally to fight corruption," he told reporters.
The prosecutors said Brazil's Justice Ministry sought to establish the rules of the joint force, so evidence was shared through government channels and not directly between the prosecutors. Argentina, however, wanted to turn the task force into a treaty signed by both governments, undermining cooperation between the actual investigators.
In response, Argentina's Foreign Ministry said it is analyzing the agreement “with priority and in a responsible manner” within the framework of its legal powers.
“The Agreement establishes that it will be applicable once the respective Central Authorities responsible for international legal cooperation have taken intervention,” the Ministry said.
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Odebrecht, Latin America's largest construction firm, is at the center of a global graft scandal. According to a U.S. court ruling, between 2001 and 2016, Odebrecht paid about US$788 million in bribes in 12 countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.
In Brazil, Odebrecht paid US$349 million in bribes to secure an improper advantage to obtain and retain business between 2003 and 2016, which generated more than US$1.9 billion in profits, according to the U.S. ruling.
Last year, the company agreed to pay at least US$3.5 billion to U.S. and Swiss investigators for international charges related to the scandal.
Janot said it was not the first time prosecutors have run into hurdles in setting up binational task forces to investigate international connections of Brazil's massive graft scandal, first centered on contracts at the state-run oil company Petrobras.
A task force proposed by Swiss prosecutors a year ago and another sought six months ago by Spanish prosecutors never got off the ground. "And now this one with Argentina," Janot said.
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