(Bloomberg) -- A Brazilian appeals court judge on Saturday ordered the release of Eike Batista, revoking a temporary prison order that expires on Monday, Reuters reported.
Batista, the oil magnate who was Brazil’s richest man before his business crashed, was arrested in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday as part of a wider corruption investigation known as Carwash. The detention was aimed at preventing Batista from contacting other suspects to set up a defense strategy, but federal appeals judge Simone Schreiber ruled an arrest order can’t be used as a tool to constrain the defense, Reuters reported, citing court documents.
Batista was already serving a 30-year sentence and under house arrest after being convicted last year of paying $16.6 million to get government contracts. His commodities and logistics empire raised his personal fortune to more than $30 billion at the start of the decade, before evaporating as his group of start-ups went bust under a mountain of debt and insider-trading investigations.
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