Brazil’s corruption-racked and debt-laden state oil firm Petrobras said on Monday that a federal court had thrown out an injunction intended to prevent the sale of the company’s fuel distribution arm BR Distribuidora, according to Reuters.
Petrobras has been divesting assets and slashing budgets on a big scale in an attempt to get out of the red as it wrestles with the slump in oil prices and the effects of the multibillion-dollar bribes-for-inflated contracts graft scheme surrounding the firm.
In a securities filing, the company said the court in Sergipe in the northeast of the country had ended the case without making a ruling. Petrobras had explained it was already reworking its asset sale plan after a ruling by a federal audit court.
In another matter, Petrobras announced that the head of its operation in Bolivia had been placed under house arrest in Santa Cruz since March 22 over a payment dispute with a supplier.
A Bolivian contractor claimed it was owed $2.5m but Petrobras said the amount had been paid.
Petrobras said it is confident its legal defence will overturn the house arrest of Marcos Antunes, claiming that the case was “improperly presented to the criminal justice system” when it really is just a commercial dispute.
