Summary
Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is behind a corruption-plagued South American toll road scheme, swamped in litigation over bribes paid to the mayor who issued the contract.
The Rutas de Lima toll road project, meant to ease the paralyzing traffic in the Peruvian capital, collapsed into scandal with revelations that the Brazilian firm Odebrecht had bribed the mayor with $3 million in 2013 for a 30-year contract to run the highway system.
Instead of relief, Rutas brought predatory toll hikes that crushed the working poor, while Odebrecht pocketed the money. Brazilian authorities, in their expansive Operation Car Wash investigation of international corruption networks, led to Odebrecht pleading guilty in 2016 to what the U.S. Department of Justice called “the largest foreign bribery case in history.”
h/t Mauser
