WILL BRAZIL BE READY?
Questions swirl about finances of$900 million stadium,
The cost of building Brasilia’s World Cup stadium has nearly tripled to $900 million in public funds, largely due to fraudulent billing, government auditors allege. The spike in costs has made it the world’s second-most expensive soccer arena, even though the city has no major professional team.
An Associated Press analysis of data from Brazil’s top electoral court shows skyrocketing campaign contributions by companies that have won the most World Cup projects.
The lead builder of Brasilia’s stadium increased its political donations 500-fold in the most recent election.
The links between construction firms and politicians add to suspicions that preparations for soccer’s premier event are marred by corruption. They also raise questions about how politicians who benefit from construction firms’ largess can be effective watchdogs over billion-dollar World Cup contracts.
“These donations are making corruption in this country even worse
and making it increasingly difficult to fight,” said Renato Rainha, an arbiter at Brasilia’s Audit Court, which is investigating the Brasilia stadium spending. “These politicians are working for those who financed campaigns.”
Auditors said they found $275 million in price-gouging and have examined only threefourths of the project.
Federal prosecutors say as yet no individuals or companies face corruption charges related to World Cup work. There are at least a dozen separate federal investigations into World Cup spending.
Brasilia’s stadium relies solely on financing from the federal district’s coffers, meaning every cent comes from taxpayers.
The auditors’ report found instances of what appears to be flagrant overpricing. For exam
ple, it says the transporting of prefabricated grandstands was supposed to cost just $4,700, but the construction consortium billed the gov- ernment $1.5 million. The consortium is made up of Andrade Gutierrez, a construction conglomerate, and Via an engineering firm.
The steel to build the
and Engenharia, arena represented onefifth of total expenses —
auditors say wasteful cutting practices or poor planning added $28 million in costs, the single biggest overrun.
Andrade Gutierrez did not respond to an AP request for comment on the accusations of cost overruns. It noted that its political donations were legal.
But Claudio Monteiro, the head of the government’s World Cup committee in Brasilia responsible for oversight, said the audit court’s allegations are simply wrong and that all the spending would be justified.
He asked why the report came out so to the start of the tournament. party,” “That’s why close I say they’re trying to spoil the
Monteiro said. “We’re going to show how this report is off base.”
But suspicions abound in Brazil, where in a poll last year three-fourths of respondents said the World Cup construction has been infused with corruption.
That helped fuel widespread, often violent, anti-government protests last June that sent more than a million Brazilians into the streets. Many protesters railed against corruption and the billions spent to host the Cup.
The overall price of the 12 stadiums has jumped to $4.2 billion in nominal terms, nearly four times the estimate in a 2007 FIFA document published just days before Brazil was awarded the tournament. At the time, leaders also promised the stadiums would be privately funded.
Critics say four of the stadiums will become white elephants after the tournament because they are in cities that cannot support them.