Brazil's Petrobras to release delayed earnings amid scandal

Brazilian state oil giant Petrobras, embroiled in an alleged multi-billion-dollar kickback scandal, will release long-delayed 2014 earnings results next Wednesday, the company said.

Petrobras has repeatedly delayed the release of its 2014 third-quarter and full-year results, making investors increasingly wary.

"The audited results will be made public on April 22," Petrobras said in a statement Thursday night.

Petrobras shares have climbed 50 percent during the last 30 days, as rumors circulated that the results would soon be released.

The third-quarter earnings, originally due last November, were postponed several times after the company's external auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers refused to sign off on them.

Although the oil giant announced unaudited third-quarter results in late January, it said it considered it "impossible" to calculate "correctly, completely and definitively" the damages resulting from the corruption scandal.

Petrobras shares plummeted on the incomplete results and its president, Graca Foster, and senior leadership resigned a week later.

Petrobras has been beset for months by the probe into alleged kickbacks to politicians, mainly allies of the government of President Dilma Rousseff, a former Petrobras chair.

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 contracts that let the money be laundered through the firms.

Police say the graft ring moved around $4 billion over the past decade.