Summary The news sent Petrobras shares plunging 8.75 percent in early trading in Sao Paulo.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Scandal-plagued Brazilian oil giant Petrobras on Wednesday announced incomplete, long delayed third quarter 2014 results that show profits fell 9 percent compared to the same period the previous year.
The news sent Petrobras shares plunging 8.75 percent in early trading in Sao Paulo.
It was Petrobras second earnings report since a massive scandal broke in March exposing alleged kickbacks by contractors and payoffs to politicians estimated at up to four billion dollars.
In its twice delayed report, Petrobras said it earned 3.097 billion reales ($1.2 million) in the third quarter, a 38 percent drop from the second quarter 2014.
The oil giant gave no details on the loss in the value of assets resulting from the graft scandal, saying it could not quantify the depreciation.
Moreover, the results which were originally supposed to be released in November were not signed off by external auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Petrobras said it had a duty to shareholders to release the results, even if incomplete and not externally signed off.
Asset losses a questionmark
"The company understands it will be necessary to make adjustments to the accounts to make modifications to the value of fixed assets affected by fraudulent contracts," Petrobras said in a statement.
The firm added it considered it "impossible" to calculate "correctly, completely and definitively" the extent of asset depreciation resulting from the corruption scandal.
Market analysts estimate the depreciation at between $10 and 20 billion.
Petrobras blamed the poor results at least in part on a drop in production and oil exploitation as well as a fall in the value of the real against the dollar and the suspension of work on two refineries.
Brazil s biggest company has been beset for months by a widening probe into alleged kickbacks benefitting politicians, mainly allies of the government of President Dilma Rousseff, a former Petrobras chair.
A total of 39 people -- former executives from the company itself and representatives of construction companies -- are under investigation.
A detained former Petrobras director, Paulo Roberto Costa, says dozens of politicians benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars of kickbacks from inflated Petrobras contracts over the course of a decade.
Under the alleged corruption scheme, companies won contracts that were inflated to include illicit surcharges.
The cash was then allegedly passed on to intermediary companies that drew up bogus service and consultancy contracts, allowing the money to be laundered through these firms.
Police say the graft ring moved $4 billion over the past decade.
No one has been formally charged yet. But one suspect has implicated 28 politicians, some of them close to Rousseff herself, who denies all knowledge of the scam.
After a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rousseff demanded an end to corruption as she seeks to revitalize an economy mired in low growth and struggling for investment with its reputation dented by the Petrobras affair.
"We must punish but not destroy firms (which) are essential to Brazil. We must close the door on corruption," Rousseff said.
