Petrobras

There's an awful lot of oil in Brazil ...  and an awful lot of scandal. Petrobras, that huge Brazilian oil company, has just been exposed as chock-a-block full of cronyism and corruption ... all mostly tied to the current government there ... read the details here: Bloomberg Story. However, after reading most of the sordid bribery and kickback details of this clearly criminal enterprise, note that there is one key detail that was not mentioned ... and that was that President Obama, in an unprecedented move,took an executive action to lend Petrobras and Brazil  2+ billion dollars in 2009 to develop its offshore oil resources.

To me, this transaction was quite unusual and suspicious when it was announced ... see: Wall Street Journal Article ... but has largely gone unnoticed and un-commented-on since it occurred. Even the Bloomberg article referenced above does not cite this Obama commitment. This pledge then seemed very odd to me in that Obama had a well-documented aversion to carbon-based sources of energy.

Humm ... I wonder if the Clinton Foundation received any significant donations from Brazil or Petrobras around the time of this Obama largess? Hopefully that new exposé book, Clinton Cash, will shed some light on this possibility.

Afterward: For another wrinkle on this Obama deal read this later article in: Forbes Magazine.

After Afterward: And now a Clinton Foundation connection ... see: Wall Street Journal Article. Since this WSJ article is behind a paywall, I include a key quote from it here:

OAS has been in the news because it is caught up in a corruption scandal centered on Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras. In November Brazilian police arrested three top OAS executives for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme involving inflated contracts and kickbacks. OAS denies the allegations. Closer to home the 2013 OAS donation to the Clinton Foundation deserves attention because of the power that Bill Clinton has in Haiti, where OAS has been awarded IDB contracts.