 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Conglomerate |
| Founded | 1944 |
| Founders | Norberto Odebrecht |
| Headquarters | Salvador, Bahia, Brazil São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil |
Key people | Luciano Guidolin (CEO) Ruy Lemos Sampaio (chairman) |
| Products | Construction, engineering, aerospace, environmental engineering, petrochemicals, chemicals, utilities, ethanol, real estate, infrastructure, defense, transportation, and others |
| Revenue |  US$25.7 billion (2017) |
 US$207.6 million (2017) | |
Number of employees | 47,800[1] |
| Parent | Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A. |
| Subsidiaries | Construtora Norberto Odebrecht Odebrecht Oil and Gas Foz do Brasil Odebrecht Realizações Imobiliárias Odebrecht Infraestrutura Odebrecht Agroindustrial, Braskem Odebrecht Administradora E Corretora De Seguros Odeprev Odebrecht Previdência Odebrecht USA Odebrecht Foundation Mectron Odebrecht Energia |
| Website | www.novonor.com |
Odebrecht S.A. (Brazilian Portuguese: [odɛˈbɾɛ(t)ʃ]), officially known as Novonor, is a Brazilian conglomerate, headquartered in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, consisting of diversified businesses in the fields of engineering, construction, chemicals and petrochemicals. The company was founded in 1944 in Salvador by Norberto Odebrecht, and is active in the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Its leading company is Norberto Odebrecht Construtora.[2]
Odebrecht S.A. is a holding company for Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A., the biggest engineering and contracting company in Latin America, and Braskem, the largest petrochemicals producer in Latin America and one of Brazil's five largest private-sector manufacturing companies. Odebrecht controls Braskem, which by revenue is the fourth largest petrochemical company in the Americas and the seventeenth in the world.
The name Odebrecht has become shorthand for an unprecedented regional bribery scandal.[3] Between 2001 and 2016, Odebrecht paid US$788 million in bribes across Latin America.[4] Odebrecht has also been central to the Operation Car Wash scandal. On 19 June 2015, Brazilian authorities arrested the former CEO, Marcelo Odebrecht, in connection with their ongoing probe into bribes paid to the Brazilian oil giant, Petrobras.[5] On 7 March 2016, he was sentenced to 19 years and 4 months jail, for paying over US$30 million in bribes to executives of Petrobras, in exchange for contracts and influence.[6][7] That year, the U.S. Department of Justice fined the company $2.6 billion in what was the largest corruption case ever prosecuted under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.[8]
In June 2019, the group filed for bankruptcy, seeking to restructure US$13 billion in debt. They eventually filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy just two months later on August 26, 2019.[9] The group changed its name to Novonor in December 2020.
In July 2022, an agreement between Novonor and Marcelo Odebrecht was signed, with the agreement, Marcelo ceases to be a shareholder in the company and ends a legal battle that started in 2020.[10]
- ^ "Novonor" (PDF).
- ^ "Corporate Structure | Odebrecht". 10 July 2012. Archived from the original on 10 July 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ "What Led Peru's Former President to Take His Own Life?". The New Yorker. 1 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
- ^ "How one company's deep web of corruption took down governments across Latin America". The Washington Post. 1 July 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
- ^ "Brazil Arrests Head of Odebrecht in Petrobras Scandal". The New York Times. 20 June 2015. Retrieved 22 December 2016.
- ^ Fonseca, Pedro (8 March 2016). "Former Odebrecht CEO sentenced in Brazil kickback case". Reuters. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ "Brazil Petrobras scandal: Tycoon Marcelo Odebrecht jailed". BBC. 8 March 2016. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
- ^ Campos, Nicolás; Engel, Eduardo; Fischer, Ronald D.; Galetovic, Alexander (2021). "The Ways of Corruption in Infrastructure: Lessons from the Odebrecht Case". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 35 (2): 171–190. doi:10.1257/jep.35.2.171. ISSN 0895-3309.
- ^ "Brazil's Odebrecht files for bankruptcy in U.S." Wall Street Journal. 26 August 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2023.
- ^ "Marcelo Odebrecht faz acordo para encerrar disputas judiciais com empresa da família e deixa sociedade". O Globo (in Brazilian Portuguese). 11 July 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2023.