Marcelo Odebrecht
Brazilian businessman
Marcelo Bahia Odebrecht (Brazilian Portuguese: [maʁˈsɛlu baˈiɐ odeˈbɾɛʃt͡ʃ]; born 18 October 1968) is a Brazilian businessman and the former CEO of Odebrecht, a diversified Brazilian Conglomerate. In March 2016, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for paying more than $30 million in bribes. The jail sentence was reduced to ten years in prison in December 2016 for paying a fine, admitting guilt and providing evidence to authorities.
Early life
He was born in October 1968, the son of Emílio Odebrecht and Regina Bahia, and the grandson of Norberto Odebrecht, the company's founder. They trace their descent from a family of German immigrants to Brazil in the 1850s.
Career
After receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), Marcelo joined Odebrecht in 1992, and was appointed CEO in 2008.
He became vice president of the Brazilian Association of Infra-Structure and Primary Industry (ABDIB) in 2005, and vice president of COINFRA, FIESP in 2004. He is chairman of Odebrecht Óleo E Gás, Odebrecht Realizações Imobiliárias, Foz Do Brasil and Eth Bioenergia S.A. He is chairman of Braskem S.A. He serves is a director of the Exterior Commerce Chamber CONEX since 2005, a member of the strategic superior board of Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (FIESP) since 2008 and a director of the Industry Development Study Institute, IEDI since 2003.
Operation Car Wash
On 19 June 2015, he was arrested as part of a major investigation, Operation Car Wash (Portuguese: Operação Lava Jato), into corruption at the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Otávio Azevedo, CEO of Andrade Gutierrez, Brazil's second largest construction firm, was also arrested, along with a total of ten others, including senior Odebrecht executives.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1893387. VIAF identifies the subject as 2323151778257318130002. The Library of Congress control number is n2018250862. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2016, 1992 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Marcelo Odebrecht” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.