Just a few days ago, the Jamaica Olympic Team shared a video of ongoing construction in their rooms, exposed wiring, blocked toilets at the Olympic Village.
Green pools, leaking ceilings and more, athletes and the media are exposing the complete construction bust that is the Olympic Park. What is worse, this negligence led to nine workers losing their lives during the construction.
The company responsible? Odebrecht, the largest construction firm in South America and the company responsible for building over half of the Olympic Park. Turns out Odebrecht even bribed public officials for the Olympic contracts!
Oderbrecht is a corrupt corporation that thinks it can get away with this kind of shameless negligence and still get taxpayers money -- and it won't budge unless we threaten its bottom line.
Ask the city of Rio to end all contracts with Oderbrecht, the company resposible for ruining the Olympic games, from now onwards.
If you haven’t heard of Odebrecht, that’s because it thrives on anonymity, although its not exactly the most low profile corrupt corporation out there. In March this year, the company’s CEO, Marcelo Oderbrecht, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for paying over US$30 million in bribes to executives of Brazil's oil company Petrobras, in exchange for contracts.
Thanks to Oderbrecht’s ambition, workers were killed and the Olympic Park is a shambles. And all of this for nothing. Olympics tickets sales are at their lowest. Meanwhile, Rio's public purse collapses and the city faces it biggest wave of displacement to this date. Policing in Rio has also gone out of hand. More than 100 people have been murdered by police in the past year and the army has deployed 8,000 troops increasing the militarisation of the city.
While low-income folks have to skip town and are murdered by police, the only ones who benefit from the games are the elite, financiers and big construction firms like Oderbrecht, even though it is responsible for the disaster of the Rio Olympics. It is not okay.
Don't let Odebrecht hide behind anonymity, ask Eduardo Paes, Rio's Mayor, to end all contracts with this corrupt corporation now.
More information
The Guardian . 7 December 2016.