BERLIN–Swiss au­thor­i­ties are hand­ing Brazil more than US$120 mil­lion that was frozen as part of cor­rup­tion probes in­volv­ing Brazil­ian state-run oil com­pa­ny Petro­bras, pros­e­cu­tors said Wednes­day. The fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor's of­fice in Bern said it has opened nine in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­leged mon­ey laun­der­ing since last April, tar­get­ing eight Brazil­ian cit­i­zens along with "per­sons as yet uniden­ti­fied."

It said it has found over 300 ac­counts at more than 30 banks in Switzer­land that ap­par­ent­ly were used to process bribes be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in Brazil. In to­tal, it has frozen as­sets to­tal­ing about US$400 mil­lion. "The re­lease of over US$120 mil­lion re­flects Switzer­land's clear in­ten­tion to take a stand against the mis­use of its fi­nan­cial cen­tre for crim­i­nal pur­pos­es and to re­turn funds of crim­i­nal ori­gin to their right­ful own­ers," the pros­e­cu­tor's of­fice said in a state­ment.

Brazil­ian pros­e­cu­tors say a kick­back scheme at Petro­bras is the coun­try's biggest graft case yet, with at least US$800 mil­lion paid by con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing firms in bribes to po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed for­mer ex­ec­u­tives at the oil com­pa­ny, all in ex­change for win­ning in­flat­ed con­tracts.

AP