Halister News

(Bloomberg) -- Jose Sergio Gabrielli, CEO from July 2005 to February 2012, said in court papers Tuesday he wasn’t part of kickback scheme involving other employees of state-owned Petroleo Brasileiro SA who extracted bribes on construction projects.

• Petrobras is center of the country’s biggest corruption and money-laundering scandal, which spread to the nation’s largest construction and engineering companies

• Plaintiffs, led by a Liverpool, England-based pension fund, sued dozens of ex-employees in federal court in New York claiming scandal helped knock tens of billions of dollars off Petrobras’s market value

• They also accused executives of issuing misleading financial statements and overstating quality of internal controls

• Gabrielli says that after months of evidence-collecting, “plaintiffs have failed to identify any admissible evidence suporting their claim” that he should be held liable

• Gabrielli and others who were sued asked U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff to dismiss the case against them

• Petrobras says case should be thrown out because company was a victim of a plot run by contractors and rogue politicians with help from a few corrupt employees, and cash traded for political favors was stolen from company

• The case is In re Petrobras Securities Litigation, 14- cv-09662, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).