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World Bank unit implicated in Latin America graft scandal
Joshua Goodman, Associated Press Updated 11:28 pm CDT, Monday, July 1, 2019
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — María Victoria Guarín was a key adviser on Colombia's biggest-ever transportation project: a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) highway across mountainous terrain connecting the capital to busy Caribbean ports.
As an investment officer for a World Bank unit, it was her job to help the government set the terms for competitive bidding by contractors. It turns out she was also married to a senior executive of a company that won part of the very contract she helped to oversee.
That apparent conflict of interest has now dragged the bank into the edges of Latin America's biggest corruption scandal, as revealed in a little-noticed report issued last year by Colombia's anti-trust agency.
The Grupo Aval conglomerate that employed Guarín's husband was partnered with Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant that has admitted to paying $6.5 million in bribes to seal the deal — one of dozens of projects it now acknowledges winning through illegal payments.
More:
https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/World-Bank-unit-implicated-in-Latin-America-graft-14065634.php