OEC, ex-Odebrecht, tries to rise from the Car Wash ashes

OEC, the engineering arm of the Novonor group, was declared the winner of two major bids to build a future metro line linking central São Paulo to downtown Guarulhos, a large city on the metropolitan outskirts that is home to the country’s busiest airport. The line will extend across 17 kilometers and have 15 stations, serving 630,000 people who commute daily between the two cities.

Novonor is the new name of the Odebrecht group, once at the center of the sprawling Operation Car Wash scandal. Launched in 2014 and lasting until 2021, the largest anti-corruption investigation in Brazilian history exposed how bribery was embedded in the business model of major construction firms — and how politicians across the political spectrum took part in kickback schemes.

At the time, Odebrecht was the largest and most powerful construction group in Latin America, but it nearly sank into bankruptcy after Operation Car Wash. The new contract for the São Paulo metro line (worth a combined BRL 13.6 billion, or USD 2.6 billion) is the largest secured by the company since its fall from grace.