COLOMBIAN President Juan Manuel Santos was ensnared on Tuesday in the massive corruption scandal rocking Brazil.

Colombian Attorney General Nestor Humberto Martinez said Brazilian firm Odebrecht paid up to £800,000 to Mr Santos’s election campaign in 2014.

The money was allegedly channelled to Mr Santos by Otto Bula, a former senator for the Liberal Party, founded by former president Alvaro Uribe — the chief opponent of last year’s peace deal with communist rebels.

Mr Martinez said Odebrecht gave Mr Bula £3.7 million to bribe as yet unidentified officials to win a road-building contract for the conglomerate.

Most of the money went through companies in Panama and China, but two alleged transfers to Colombia of almost £800,000 in total purportedly ended up in the management of Mr Santos’s campaign, Mr Martinez said.

Transparency Secretary Camilo Encisco tried to discredit the allegations and said Mr Santos welcomed any investigations.

“It’s the word of a criminal, who is looking for legal benefits at any cost, against the word of a campaign manager,” he said.

The construction giant is at the heart of the Operation Car Wash probe into bribes paid to Brazilian state oil firm Petrobras in return for contracts.

Odebrecht has admitted to paying an incredible £640m in bribes to government officials in the region.

In December it was ordered to pay a $3.5 billion (£2.8bn) fine in the US, after which the Colombian authorities began investigating.

Last month Mr Santos claimed he wanted the “entire weight of the law to fall” on any member of his government implicated in the scandal.

In neighbouring Venezuela on Tuesday the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) expressed its support for a probe by the general prosecutor into bribery allegations against Odebrecht.

PCV politburo member Hector Rodriguez told a press conference the investigation should be pursued to its ultimate conclusion regardless of “whoever may fall.”

On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that the government would take over and complete 16 construction projects being undertaken by Odebrecht, since frozen by order of a Brazilian court.

They include the works on the Caracas underground and commuter cable-car networks, bridges, industrial complexes and renovating an airport outside the capital.

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