02/15/2017 - Page 2 of 2

02/15/20170 Comments

Venezuela Prosecutors Raid Odebrecht Offices in Bribe Probe

Venezuelan authorities raided the Caracas offices of Odebrecht on Tuesday, as prosecutors deepened a probe into the Brazilian construction firm that has admitted paying some $98 million in bribes to obtain government contracts in Venezuela.

“The investigation is aimed at clarifying the situation and determining if the projects for which this company was contracted were completed,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Odebrecht and affiliated petrochemical company Braskem in December pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to violating American foreign bribery laws by paying off officials to help secure lucrative construction contracts in 12 countries.

According to the plea bargain agreement, Odebrecht and representatives paid some $98 million in bribes to government officials and intermediaries in Venezuela between 2006 and 2015 – the highest amount outside Brazil.

President Nicolas Maduro has said that those responsible should be punished, but his critics say his government has been slow to respond to the scandal.

The country’s top prosecutor said in January that authorities were seeking the arrest of a person involved in the case, without disclosing the person’s identity.
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Arts & Entertainment

02/15/20170 Comments

Photography Isn’t Dead After All, says Salgado

Having once forecast doom for photography in the face of the smartphone, Sebastiao Salgado has changed his mind.

One of the most lauded documentary photographers of recent decades, 73-year-old Salgado told Reuters: “I don’t think it is endangered. I thought so at some point, but I was wrong and I take that back. I think photography, now more than ever, has a long future ahead.”

The Brazilian is still dismissive of the billions of smartphones which now take the overwhelming majority of the world’s pictures.

But he believes that documentary photographers are cutting through that with memorable pictures that will survive.

“What people do with their telephones is not photography, it’s images,” he said in Bangkok for an exhibition of his work. “Photography is a tangible thing, you grab it, you look at it. It is something akin to memory.”

Salagdo’s black and white, pin-sharp images have a grandeur that only enhances his often brutal subject matter of people caught in poverty and conflict or threatened environments.

Among his most famous photographs are those of swarming and muddy gold miners in Serra Pelada in Brazil.

Salgado shifted to digital photography from film in 2008, but his prints are still created using the old gelatin silver process for the range and subtlety of its tones.

Industry estimates for the total number of photos that will be taken in 2017 range upwards from a trillion.

At least 85 percent of those pictures will be taken on one of the world’s more than 2 billion smartphones with only some 10 percent taken on a dedicated digital camera.
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