Top Brazilian executives from several large construction and engineering firms who have been linked to the Petrobras kickback scheme left prison on Wednesday and will now remain under house arrest.

As reported in an Associated Press article, some of the powerful individuals that were released were Ricardo Pessoa, the chief executive officer of UTC Engenharia, and Gerson Almada, the vice president of Engevix. Both UTC Engenharia and Engevix are considered to be two of Brazil's largest engineering companies.

On Thursday, seven other top executives from companies such as OAS, Camargo Correa, and Galvao Engenharia were released from their confinements and prepared for home detention.

With Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling allowing executives to await possible trials on corruption charges under house detention, powerful businessmen that had been jailed for nearly six months were finally allowed to go home. A federal judge in southern Brazil had initially ruled that the executives were flight risks or that they might use their considerable power to influence the investigation.

Prosecutors working on the kickback case, in which private companies are alleged to have paid bribes to politically appointed executives at Petrobras in order to win inflated building contracts, have stated that they have uncovered what could be the biggest corruption scheme ever to be exposed in Brazil.

Last week Petrobras released estimates that it had lost at least $2.1 billion due to the scheme which took place from 2003 until 2012.

President Dilma Rousseff, who was chairwoman of the Petrobras board during the years when the scheme occurred, has not in any way been implicated in the scandal, and has in fact expressed her strong support for the investigation and for eventually holding the executives guilty in the kickback scandal accountable for their actions.