CGU releases audio recording of testimony from former SBM employee.

Paulo Victor Chagas – Reporter for Agência Brasil

The Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) released this Sunday (19) audio with the full transcript of a conversation between employees of the agency and the former director of SBM Offshore, Jonathan David Taylor. The Dutch company is the target of a punitive process for evidence of corruption involving Petrobras. Taylor's testimony took place in October 2014, after contact made by the former director, claiming to have elements that could contribute to the investigations.

In a press release, the CGU reaffirms that the documentation presented by the former SBM employee was not used at the time of the conclusion of the process, as there were indications that the documents may have been obtained through illicit means, which could contaminate the entire investigation.

The disclosure is a follow-up to events from last week, when, in an interview with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, Jonathan Taylor said that he delivered documents to the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) in August and that the investigation ended after the election period to "protect the PT (Workers' Party) and President Dilma." The agency claims that the process began in April of last year and that the actions continued to be disclosed independently of the election calendar.

A new report by Folha this Sunday (19) shows a section of the audio in which Taylor states to CGU employees that SBM bribes were paid personally to Petrobras employees. According to the CGU, however, the materials delivered by the former director did not contain elements that indicated illicit activities involving SBM employees and the Brazilian state-owned company. The audio released on the internet reveals, according to the CGU, that Taylor stated he never saw the transfers of funds to Petrobras public agents.

According to the news outlet, Taylor's statement was previously unknown to CGU employees, indicating a "more decisive contribution" from the former director to the investigations. The agency confirms that it encountered difficulties in receiving information from the Dutch Public Prosecutor's Office, but adds that, while important, this information was not indispensable to its work.

"To date, the volume of information exceeds 12 terabytes [a terabyte is a unit of information used in computing, equivalent to approximately 1,1 billion bytes]. The complexity and scale of the work resulted in coordinated action involving four areas of the CGU (Internal Affairs, Auditing, International Cooperation, and Intelligence). All this work was carried out in parallel with the collection and analysis of information in Brazil. The CGU did not wait, at any point, for foreign information to begin acting," the statement says.