AmBev calls bribery allegations “false and incoherent”

Brazil | After years of investigations into the country’s biggest corruption scheme, “Operation Carwash” is still bringing up more dirt.

Now it was AmBev’s turn to be implicated. It was accused of making “inappropriate payments” to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, two former Brazilian presidents. Allegedly, the country’s major brewer hoped these payments would prevent a hike in corporate taxes.

AB-InBev’s local unit AmBev, on 8 August 2019, vigorously denied the report in the Brazilian newspaper, Estado de S. Paulo, calling the allegations “false and incoherent”.

Earlier, Estado de S. Paulo reported that Antonio Palocci, a jailed former finance minister, had said in a plea bargain testimony that AmBev had made the payments to former presidents.

Not enough, Mr Palocci said he also received payments from the firm, according to the newspaper.

In a statement to Reuters, AmBev said: “[The allegations are] false because we never made any inappropriate payments of any nature to receive undue benefits. And incoherent because, since 2015, the beverage sector has suffered through a major increase in (federal corporate) taxes, by around 60 percent, contradicting everything that was alleged.”

“Operation Carwash” began as an investigation into money laundering in 2014, but quickly turned into a sweeping corruption probe, uncovering a vast and intricate web of political and corporate racketeering, says The Guardian newspaper.