RIO DE JENERIO: Police have issued an international arrest warrant for Brazilian magnate Eike Batista who is wanted over money-laundering accusations, officials said Friday, branding him a fugitive.
A source in Brazil's federal police told AFP that cross-border agency Interpol had issued a "red notice" alert for the arrest of the oil and mining magnate, 60.
"He is subject to an international warrant," the source said.
Brazilian police searched Batista's home on Thursday over accusations that he paid a $16.5 million bribe to former Rio de Janeiro state governor Sergio Cabral into a Uruguayan bank account in 2011.
Batista is the latest high-profile suspect in investigations linked to a vast bribery scandal at state oil firm Petrobras.
The affair has netted numerous politicians and executives and put pressure on President Michel Temer as he tries to drag Latin America's biggest economy out of recession.
Batista's lawyer Fernando Martins said earlier that the suspect was in New York but planned to return to Brazil and turn himself in.
Batista reached number seven on Forbes magazine's world richest people list in 2012. In 2011 he was said to be worth $30 billion.
But his fortune largely evaporated when his oil company OGX collapsed in 2013.