According to Reuters, the trust filed suit in a Manhattan federal court, claiming that a “pervasive bribery and money laundering scheme” at Petrobras caused it and a second plaintiff, WGI Emerging Markets Fund, to lose tens of millions of dollars.
Advertisement
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust filed a lawsuit late Thursday in New York against Petrobras and its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, the infamous philanthropist couple, were reported to have joined a string of stakeholders that are taking legal action against Petroleo Brasileiro SA – Petrobras (ADR) (NYSE:PBR), after a multi-billion dollar graft scandal erupted at the Brazilian state-run oil company. “This is a case of institutional corruption, criminal conspiracy and a massive fraud on the investing public”, the lawsuit said. “Contrary to some media reports, the Gates Foundation is not suing Petrobras”, the foundation said in a press release. The company is already struggling to recover its reputation and declining investors’ confidence.
According to the suit, accounting giant PwC played an important role in misleading investors by attesting to Petrobras’ financial statements.
Petrobras has long maintained it was a victim of a yearslong bid-rigging and bribery ring that Brazilian prosecutors say was cooked up by suppliers and a few crooked insiders who fleeced the oil company for at least $2 billion. Westwood Global Investments, a Boston-based firm, manages investments for the foundation and the WGI fund.
With the slump of oil prices, the company is also facing a huge debt balloon of around $125 billion.
Shares of Petrobras, which in 2010 ranked among the top five biggest companies in the world, have fallen by more than 44 percent this year.
Some Petrobras executives were later sent to jail because of that.
The Gates Foundation is a charity that distributes money to grantees working on everything from the eradication of polio to helping small coffee farmers.
The foundation’s trust manages the group’s $41 billion endowment.
Advertisement
Brazil’s corruption-ridden oil giant Petrobras has one more enemy: Bill Gates.
