SÃO PAULO: After losing about $30 billion in the past few years amid the collapse of his industrial group, embattled Brazilian entrepreneur Eike Batista told a congressional panel that he has nearly paid off or renegotiated all his debts and wants to do business again.
“I am not bankrupt,” Mr. Batista told a commission formed to investigate possible irregularities in loans given by Brazil´s development bank, or BNDES, to some large local conglomerates.
BNDES signed agreements to loan Mr. Batista’s firms around 10 billion reais (about $2.62 billion). Mr. Batista paid off some of that debt. The rest was assumed by investors who purchased the businessman’s companies out of bankruptcy. Mr. Batista denied receiving any special favors from the development bank and said he paid the same rates as other borrowers.
Once Brazil’s richest person, Mr. Batista testified that until recently, he was about $1 billion in debt.
Mr. Batista blamed the failure of his group on his flagship oil company, OGX, which was the largest of his five publicly owned companies. OGX went public in 2008 for $4.1 billion, Brazil´s largest initial public offering at the time. But the firm declared bankruptcy in 2013 after failing to produce any of the 10.8 billion barrels Mr. Batista said it could find.
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