South America

The accusations of corruption at Brazil’s state-controlled petroleum giant Petrobras have already led to a political scandal and a change in management. Now, the problems are threatening other Brazilian companies and may even tip the country into recession, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. It would be hard to overstate Petrobras’s importance in Brazil.

US holders of defaulted Argentine bonds have stepped up their campaign for full repayment of their loans by detailing how 14 senior Argentine officials experienced “dramatic and often unexplained increases” in their personal wealth during service in the Kirchner administrations, the Irish Times reported.

Brazilian police said they seized seven cars, including a white Lamborghini, and $32,490 in cash, computers, watches and other items on Friday from embattled oil and mining tycoon Eike Batista, who is on trial for insider trading in Rio de Janeiro, Reuters reported. Batista resigned as chairman of Oleo E Gas Participações SA , the flagship firm in his once-expansive EBX conglomerate on Jan. 27, two months after the trial started. The company formerly known as OGX is emerging from Latin America's largest-ever bankruptcy restructuring.

A judge in Rio de Janeiro has ordered the freezing of all of embattled businessman Eike Batista ’s financial assets and ordered the seizure of up to 1.5 billion reais ($547 million) of his physical assets, including real estate, The Wall Street Journal reported. The orders cover the assets of Mr. Batista’s sons, Thor and Olin Batista, and those of his former wife, Luma de Oliveira, and his current girlfriend, Flávia Sampaio, Judge Flávio Roberto de Souza said in an interview.

A court in Brazil's São Paulo state seized on Friday 8.9 percent of the shares that construction group OAS SA has in infrastructure company Investimentos e Participações em Infraestrutura SA, alleging that the debt-ridden group is in imminent risk of insolvency. Judge Roberto Corcioli Filho of the state of São Paulo Justice Court told Reuters that he ordered the seizure at the behest of Pentágono SA DTVM, which as a trustee represents the interests of holders of 160 million reais ($60 million) in OAS local debt notes.

Venezuelans have put up with shortages and long lines for years. But as the price of oil, the country’s main export, has plunged, the situation has grown so dire that the government has sent troops to patrol huge lines snaking for blocks. Some states have barred people from waiting outside stores overnight, and government officials are posted near entrances, ready to arrest shoppers who cheat the rationing system, the International New York Times reported.

Brazil's Petrobras has admitted it is so far unable to calculate how much money was stolen from the company in a vast corruption scandal that has shaken confidence in the world’s second-largest emerging market, the Financial Times reported. After two months of delays, the state-controlled oil producer finally published its unaudited financial statements for the third quarter of 2014 at just after 4am on Wednesday in Brazil to avoid breaking some of its debt covenants.

Nicolás Maduro promised “God will provide” after Venezuela’s president returned to Caracas apparently empty handed from a world tour where he had sought financial help for his country’s ravaged economy. Venezuela — which is a member of Opec, the oil producer’s cartel — is heavily dependent on exports of crude, the price of which has more than halved since the summer to under $50 a barrel on Thursday. In a televised state of the nation speech, Mr Maduro said oil would “not return to $100”, adding: “We have less foreign currency . . . But God will provide”.

Latin America is turning into the world leader in corporate-bond defaults, Bloomberg News reported. Four companies in the region have skipped dollar-denominated debt payments this month, more than any other area and almost half the total in all of 2014. In a sign bond investors are increasingly concerned about Latin American companies’ ability to repay debt, borrowers led by Mexico’s oil-rig operators have pushed the amount of the region’s bonds trading at distressed prices to $58 billion, about a third of all emerging-market debt trading at such levels.

Brazil will next month increase taxes on fuel and loans to individuals and adjust other duties to help plug the government’s yawning budget deficit, the Financial Times reported. New finance minister Joaquim Levy announced the measures on the eve of a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, during which he will seek to convince investors that Latin America’s biggest economy is setting its finances back on track. “The increase in revenue due to the above measures is expected to be R$20.63bn in 2015,” the finance ministry said in a statement.