In 1970s when Brazil was going through a phase of dictatorship, Eletrobras pushed its clients into lending money to the company. And later on neither paid the interest nor re-paid the amount according to the inflationary prices, causing due to the hyperinflation especially in 1990s resulting in high interest rates.
So, the court has directed Eletrobras to compensate the people from whom it took loans between the year 1987 to 1993. But the court rejected similar appeals of the clients of the company who also lent money during the 1970s terming it to be too old a case for any legal dispute.
Eletrobras, situated in Rio de Janeiro and supplying more than a third of electricity in Brazil, is planning to appeal against the ruling, said a company source on condition of anonymity. The source also said that the company is hoping the court to waive off the complete amount on the grounds that they are too old a matter to be legally disputed.
Business analyst are expecting the calculated amount to cross 3 billion reais ($1.7 billion) mark where as company’s source assuming it to be somewhere around 1.5 billion reais ($820m) out of which 1.3 billion have already been allotted to pay the claim.
