The trust that manages the $41 billion endowment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is suing Brazil’s Petróleo Brasileiro SA and its auditor in a New York court, claiming a vast corruption scheme centered on the state-run oil company caused the charitable organization to lose tens of millions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust joins a long list of plaintiffs seeking to recoup money they lost as the scandal hammered the value of their investments in Petrobras shares. More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed by U.S. investors who bought American depositary receipts sold by Petrobras in New York, including the attorney general of Ohio, public pension funds in Idaho and Hawaii, and the city of Providence, R.I. Read more. (Subscription required.)
For more on fraud issues surrounding a financially distressed company, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case.
