By Blake Schmidt and Sabrina Valle

(Bloomberg) — Marcelo Odebrecht, the previous head of one in all Brazil’s largest industrial conglomerates, was sentenced to 19 years and 4 months in jail for crimes together with corruption and cash laundering.

Odebrecht, who ran the Odebrecht SA holding firm that owns Latin America’s largest builder till after his arrest final yr, was additionally convicted of legal affiliation, decide Sergio Moro mentioned in a sentence connected to public court docket data on Tuesday.

Odebrecht was first detained on June 19 as a part of a coordinated federal police operation the place executives at different building teams have been additionally arrested. Investigators have been wanting right into a scheme the place insiders at state-controlled oil firm Petrobras and a cartel of contractors allegedly raked-off huge sums from inflated building and repair contracts. Odebrecht, the grandson of late Norberto Odebrecht, founding father of the conglomerate owned by the billionaire household, is without doubt one of the most distinguished executives taken into custody within the so-called Carwash investigation.

The probe, Brazil’s biggest-ever corruption case, has unfold throughout state-owned firms, the non-public and public sectors, and spilled over into different international locations like Peru. In Brazil, supporters and opponents of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have vowed avenue protests within the coming weeks after the get together founder was briefly detained by police in Sao Paulo on Friday for questioning within the investigation.

“The one thing that’s very clear is how this corruption really penetrated politics and some of Brazil’s private sector,” mentioned Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, in a telephone interview from Washington. “Odebrecht was sort of key as the biggest and most well-known but there were a dozen other construction companies. This is the way they did business.”

Odebrecht’s legal professionals mentioned in an e-mailed assertion that the choice was a “grave judicial mistake” and they’ll proceed combating for his freedom. Their arguments, revealed within the sentencing launch by the court docket, have been that decide Sergio Moro revealed his bias in direction of the defendant in feedback to the press, used provisional jailing of defendants to strain for plea offers, and that Odebrecht wasn’t given the complete proper to protection.

In his sworn testimony, Odebrecht referred questions from investigators to the written doc he had submitted previous to the listening to.

“I, personally, never involved myself in the management of more than 300 companies in 15 different sectors that make up the group,” Odebrecht mentioned in his written response to investigators. “Be it because that interference would be humanly impossible, or because it’s totally contrary to our culture of planned delegating, entrepreneurship and decentralization of the group’s businesses.”

Odebrecht’s billionaire household’s empire spans throughout greater than 20 nations. The firm over which he presided, Odebrecht SA, has constructed Brazilian World Cup stadiums, Cuba’s deep water port, Miami’s airport and is Angola’s largest non-public employer. The conglomerate is a significant and aggressive donor to Brazilian political campaigns.

Marcio Faria and Rogerio Santos, former executives on the conglomerate, have been additionally sentenced to 19 years and 4 months in jail, in line with the assertion.

O Globo reported earlier Tuesday that Odebrecht and the previous head of constructing conglomerate OAS need to attain a joint plea discount through which they would offer info to prosecutors about corruption at Petrobras.

“He wouldn’t have to serve 19 years then. He’d probably be out in a few years,” Hakim mentioned.

In his sentencing, Moro says Odebrecht was the primary particular person accountable for coordinating bribe funds to individuals together with Petrobras officers by way of non-declared offshore accounts. The accusation was based mostly on documented proof of cash transfers, messages intercepted between Odebrecht and different executives and affirmation from collaborators. Odebrecht was sentenced on 11 counts of lively corruption, involving $64 million in bribes to Petrobras brokers. He was additionally sentenced on 50 counts of cash laundering and for the crime of legal affiliation.

“These are millionaire operations structured with elegance that could only be done in an organized way, by people with control over the business group and its main companies,” the sentence mentioned. “There is an array of robust evidence that allows us to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that payment of bribes from the Odebrecht group to agents of Petrobras, with some of the funds going to political financing, was not an isolated act, but part of the Odebrecht group’s corporate policy.”

© 2016 Bloomberg L.P