Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC is facing fresh questions over its ties to an influential Brazilian businessman after he was charged in connection with a high-profile corruption investigation known as Operation Black Blood.
Businessman Julio Faerman, who worked as a representative for Rolls-Royce in Brazil, was charged before Christmas with alleged bribery, money laundering and tax evasion as part of a scheme involving a Dutch company and Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras.
Rolls-Royce has repeatedly declined to comment on its relationship with Faerman, who told the Guardian his company acted as an agent for Rolls-Royce when it sold power turbines to Petrobras for offshore oil platforms. Faerman denies any wrongdoing.
The British engineering group is currently cooperating with Brazilian authorities investigating alleged corruption at Petrobras and its contractors.
Earlier this year, allegations emerged that Rolls-Royce paid bribes to a ring of Petrobras executives and politicians via its agent in exchange for a US $100 million contract with the oil company.
The allegations against Rolls-Royce form part of a widespread, multibillion-dollar scandal that has engulfed Petrobras and other major Brazilian and foreign companies.
The scandal, which continues to unfold, has had a profound impact on the Brazilian economy and political landscape.
Prosecutors behind Operation Black Blood have charged a group of 12 individuals, including Faerman and his business partner, for their alleged participation in a long-running bribery scheme between Petrobras and one of its major contractors, SBM Offshore NV, which builds specialist ships for the oil and gas industry.
Faerman, a former sales agent for SBM in Brazil, was allegedly involved in arranging multimillion-dollar bribes for the Dutch company. At least US$46 million of payments were made via Swiss bank accounts, said a statement from federal prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to