Brazil's scandal-hit Petrobras: Q3 earnings slide 9%

Scandal-plagued Brazilian oil giant Petrobras announced Wednesday its third quarter profits slid 9 percent compared to the same period of 2013.
The state-owned company said profits for the period reached 3.097 billion reales ($1.2 million) in the first earnings report issued since the corruption scandal broke last year.
The profit marked a drop of 38 percent compared to the second quarter of 2013, Petrobras said in its twice delayed report.
The oil giant however did not give details on the losses in the value of assets as a result of the graft scandal, as it had promised to release.
Brazil's biggest company is embroiled in an investigation into alleged kickbacks for 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 deals over the course of a decade.
Under the alleged corruption scheme, companies won contracts that were inflated as they included illicit surcharges. The cash was then allegedly passed on to intermediary companies that serve to draw up bogus contracts, services and consultancy services, 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 pointed to 28 politicians, some of them close to Rousseff herself.