In one month, Petrobras CEO Graça Foster brought to a conclusion a probe into suspicions of multimillion-dollar bribes allegedly paid by SBM to workers at the Brazilian state-owned oil company, in a much faster time than the two-year investigation the Dutch company itself has been conducting. The committee that Petrobras created didn’t find irregularities. SBM, which is based in the Netherlands and in Monaco, has not yet concluded its own investigations, which started in 2012 and include the participation of the Dutch public prosecutors’ office, Openbaar Ministerie.

Petrobras, in a note published in newspapers, said that it “didn’t find facts or documents that show evidence of bribe payments to Petrobras employees.” It didn’t elaborate on the report findings, nor did it say who conducted the investigation. It’s implicit that the state company has not found suspect payments from the group of companies owned by Julio Faerman, a businessman who was SBM’s Offshore commercial representative in Brazil until 2012, the same year in which its client in Europe started its internal investigation.

The Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) and the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) don’t yet have copies of the final report written by Petrobras’s internal committee which concludes there were no indications of bribe payments.

Petrobras said in a statement that the final report of the internal audit would be sent to the CGU, the TCU and also to Brazil’s federal prosecutors’ office.

“The CGU has not yet received the report. We are waiting and will only make a comment after receiving and analyzing the material,” said a CGU spokesperson. “The document cited in Petrobras’ note on SDBM Off Shore has not yet been added to the case,” a TCU spokesperson said.

The accusation of payments totaling $139 million was made by a former SBM employee who had access to an internal investigation. On April 10, 2012, SBM released a note saying that it had been made aware of “certain sales practices involving third parties that may have been inappropriate.” And it said it had created a new governance and compliance department, for which it hired executive Sietze Hepkema.

Since then, details of the investigation only emerged because of a leak by a former employee, who on October 18, 2013, released an accusation in Wikipedia that SBM paid $250 million in bribes in several countries, most regarding contracts with Petrobras. SBM accuses the former employee of attempted bribery. The whistleblower mentioned six companies from the Faerman group, including Brazilian firms Oildrive and Faercom, which had received deposits of amounts that would be referent to 3% of contracts signed between SBM and Petrobras.  And of this total, 2% would have been paid to Petrobras workers. 

It’s unlikely that the group formed by Petrobras to investigate this accusation had had time to delve to the point of reaching some link, for example, between its employees and the four foreign companies that would be linked to the Faerman group — Bienfaire, Jandell, Journey Advisors and Hades Production Inc. — located abroad, probably in tax havens. It’s also unknown if the state company requested help from the Ministry of Justice, the only  department able to make recourse to overseas government agencies, such as the US Department of Justice, to track fund movements by offshore companies.

On March 17, the federal public prosecutor’s office in Rio de Janeiro launched a criminal investigation into possible embezzlement, graft and fraudulent or reckless administration, and acts of administrative misconduct, among other crimes that may have been committed by Petrobras’ or government employees.

Petrobras also said it formed a committee to “investigate the purchase process” of the Pasadena, Texas refinery.