The Guardian: filho de Machado, “caixa” da propina, gasta R$ 90 milhões em imóveis no Reino Unido Revealed: corrupt Brazilian businessman's UK property splurge The Guardian: filho de Machado, “caixa” da propina, gasta R$ 90 milhões em imóveis no Reino Unido
The Guardian: filho de Machado, “caixa” da propina, gasta R$ 90 milhões em imóveis no Reino Unido Revealed: corrupt
O jornal inglês The Guardian investigou e publica hoje um
relatório sobre os negócios imobiliários de Sérgio – o filho
de Expedito Machado , o ex-tucano que dirigia a Transpetro e que ficou
conhecido do país...
The Guardian: filho de Machado, “caixa” da propina, gasta R$ 90 milhões em imóveis no Reino Unido
O jornal inglês The Guardian
investigou e publica hoje um relatório sobre os negócios imobiliários
de Sérgio – o filho de Expedito Machado , o ex-tucano que dirigia a
Transpetro e que ficou conhecido do país inteiro pelas gravações que fez
de diálogos com Renan Calheiros, Romero Jucá e José Sarney. Sérgio gastou 21 milhões de libras, ou R$ 9o,2 milhões, em
negócios imobiliário em 2014 e 2015, a compra de edifícios de
escritórios na City londrina, na Fleet Street, rua central de Londres, um apartamento em Mayfair e um terreno ao lado do canal na zona portuária de Leeds. Do The Guardian (espero que logo alguém traduza melhor que eu e o Google):
Próximo de seu pai e com vontade de
segui-lo na política, Expedito começou a atuar como um intermediário em
2007, ajudando coletar propinas de empreiteiros. Sua declaração de
testemunha diz que seu pai, depois de assumir seu cargo na Transpetro,
quando ele perdeu sua cadeira no Senado em 2003, foi “pressionado a
obter fundos ilegais de políticos que o tinham apoiado”.
A
maioria dos fundos foram entregues aos membros eleitos do partido
brasileira Social Democrata de centro-direita (PSDB), sob cuja bandeira
Machado tinha sido eleito para o Senado. Mas parte do dinheiro foi
reservado para financiar sua futura campanha para se tornar um
governador de Estado. Foi “seu sonho”, de acordo com o seu filho.
Ao longo dos cinco anos seguintes, a
família depositou R$ 72 milhões em uma conta no HSBC em Zurique.
Aberta em 2007, a conta foi controlada por um fundo criado pelo banco,
a pedido de Expedito.
O dinheiro foi transferido do HSBC para outro banco suíço Julius Baer, em 2013. Lá, foi aplicada em fundos de investimento.
No ano seguinte, Expedito decidiu mudar seus “ativos” de fundos para propriedades. “No
final de 2014, ele decidiu começar a fazer investimentos em imóveis na
Europa e foi aconselhado por advogados que a melhor estrutura fiscal
seria através de trustees, afirma o depoimento de Expedito.
copiado http://www.tijolaco.com.br/blog/
Revealed: corrupt Brazilian businessman's UK property splurge
Guardian investigation finds Expedito Machado – who has admitted
laundering bribes for his father, a former senator – spent £21m on
British real estate
Expedito’s father, Sérgio Machado, who turned whistleblower after leaving Petrobras’s distribution arm.
Photograph: Alamy
A Brazilian businessman who has admitted laundering millions of
dollars in bribes went on a 12-month property spending spree in London
and Leeds, a Guardian investigation has found.
Expedito Machado – the son of a former senator implicated in the massive corruption scandal at Petrobras
– spent £21m on UK real estate in 2014 and 2015, buying office
buildings in the City and Fleet Street, an apartment in Mayfair and a
canal-side plot in the docklands area of Leeds.
The case potentially ties London property to one of the world’s biggest fraud investigations, called Operation Carwash.
The investigation has already uncovered an estimated $2bn of funds
diverted to Brazilian politicians and their allies. The kickbacks came
from contractors bidding for work with the country’s state-owned oil and
gas giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras.
Expedito Machado Neto.
At the heart of the inquiry is Expedito’s father, Sérgio Machado, who
turned whistleblower after he left Petrobras’s distribution arm,
Transpetro, in 2014.
Machado had been accused of operating a long-running bribery scheme
and his evidence to prosecutors, which includes secret tape recordings,
has already brought down three ministers. His accusations now risk implicating the interim president, Michel Temer, who took over following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in May. Witness statements
by Machado and his sons, who began cooperating with prosecutors in May
after negotiating plea-bargains, set out in forensic detail how bank
accounts in Switzerland and Andorra, British Virgin Islands shell
companies and secretive trusts were used to collect bribes.
The Guardian can now reveal how Expedito Machado used another set of offshore structures to move cash into the UK.
The findings raise questions about whether the money used to buy the
properties came from kickbacks. Expedito’s witness statement suggests
this was the case. His lawyers point out that none of the UK properties
are included in a list of assets of supposed illegal origin which are
being returned to the Brazilian government. They say the buildings were
acquired after Expedito sold one of his businesses.
Lists of offshore companies owned by the family were leaked to the
press along with their witness statements in June. Checks against the
Land Registry show four BVI entities set up by Expedito Machado currently hold property in England.
The 31-year-old entrepreneur and finance worker moved to London in
2012. Starting in October 2014, he spent £6m on a freehold in the former
docklands area of Leeds.
Three more investments followed – using offshore vehicles linked to multiple bank accounts at Santander:
In April 2015, GTD Properties Limited paid £7.2m for the freehold on
an office building in Great Winchester Street. In the heart of the City
of London, it is currently leased by a bank.
In June 2015, CDP Properties Limited, owned by The Noronha Trust,
bought the leasehold to a flat on Lowndes Square in Mayfair for £1.8m.
In October 2015, PDB Properties Limited, belonging to The Boldro
Trust, paid £6.2m for freehold land at Bell Yard, just off Fleet Street.
The address is home to a legal chambers, 9-12 Bell Yard, which
specialises in fraud cases.
A spokesperson for Santander said the bank could not discuss client information for confidential reasons.
Expedito Machado’s companies are understood to collect thousands of
pounds a year in rent from their commercial tenants. There is no
suggestion these leaseholders were aware of the identity of the
beneficial owners or the source of the offshore companies’ funds.
The money trail
Close to his father and keen to follow him into politics, Expedito
began acting as a go-between in 2007, helping collect kickbacks from
contractors. His witness statement says his father, after taking up his
post at Transpetro when he lost his Senate seat in 2003, was “pressured
to obtain illegal funds by politicians who had supported him”.
The majority of the funds were handed over to elected members
of the centre-right Brazilian Social Democrat party (PSDB), under whose
banner Machado had been elected to the Senate. But some of the money was
set aside to fund his future campaign to become a state governor. It
was “his dream”, according to his son.
Over the following five years, the family collected 72m reals
(£16.7m) in payments to an account held by HSBC in Zurich. Opened in
2007, the account was controlled by a trust set up by the bank, Expedito
claimed.
The cash was transferred from HSBC to another Swiss bank, Julius Baer, in 2013. There, it was held in investment funds.
The following year, Expedito decided to move the proceeds into
property. “At the end of 2014, he decided to start making investments in
real estate in Europe and was advised by lawyers that the best tax
structure would be via a trust,” Expedito’s witness statement claims.
The senator’s son had already moved to London following the sale of an education business he had founded in Brazil.
“With the conclusion of the sale in 2012,” his statement claims, he
“changed his residence to London to find a solution to the bribery money
that had been deposited in Switzerland.”Entrance of the exclusive Hôtel de Crillon in Paris where Expedito allegedly met a shipping magnate. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP
“The idea of keeping the resources in a trust was … to have full
flexibility in inclusion of new beneficiaries indicated by my father;
That our father, even could be included as one of the beneficiaries.”
The money allegedly came from six firms, named in the witness
statement, specialising in construction, shipping and engineering. At
the time, Machado Sr was overseeing the modernisation of Transpetro’s
fleet of ships, a programme that cost billions of reals.
Expedito arranged to meet executives from the contractors at cafes,
offices and restaurants in São Paulo and other locations. It was at
these encounters that arrangements for the illegal transfers were
agreed. In one case, he claimed he travelled to Paris to see a Greek
shipping owner at the opulent Hôtel de Crillon, where he allegedly
handed over the details of the family’s Swiss account at HSBC.
In another instance, a construction company is alleged to have made a
9m real payment using a shell entity called Desarrollo Lanzarote SA,
and bank accounts in the tax haven of Andorra.
Expedito said he had been assured by his father that the payments
would not influence the choice of contractor, and would be taken from
their profit margins. The system “would maintain good management” at
Transpetro, which operates a large shipping fleet, terminals and
thousands of kilometers of gas pipelines. “I understand this today to be
incompatible,” Expedito’s statement conceded, “but at the time I did
not think that way.”
Clouded by politics
Advertisement
Although
Expedito has confessed to laundering money obtained illegally by his
father, his lawyers emphasise that their client has been charged with no
crime.
“It is noteworthy that as part of the agreement signed with Brazil’s
attorney general and ratified by the supreme court, Mr Expedito Machado
is not accountable for any criminal activities and no charges will be
filed against him by the Brazilian federal prosecutors,” said his
lawyer, Flavia Lotfi.
She declined to say whether money from kickbacks was used for
Expedito’s UK investments. She noted the property was acquired after
Expedito Machado had sold his businesses in 2012 for 44m reals (then
worth about £16m).
“All assets that had supposed illegal origins have already been
identified and are being returned to the Brazilian government, in a
total amount of 75,000,000.00 [reals],” she added.
“Therefore, all of Expedito Machado’s remaining assets were
recognised as legal property by the Brazilian authorities, being even
accepted by the prosecution and the judge as collateral for the payments
he must make due to the plea-bargain.”
Prosecutors, however, were noncommittal. The office of the attorney
general said it had been necessary to work in haste and so the recovery
of funds depended on the declared assets of plea-bargain collaborators.
“It is necessary to check whether these assets have been declared in the
United Kingdom,” they said in a statement to the Guardian. “In any
case, any inconsistency that is found will be analysed.”
British law currently allows landlords to hold property via shell
companies without having to declare their real identity to the
authorities. Before resigning as prime minister, David Cameron promised
to combat corruption by ending anonymity for landlords, but draft
legislation has yet to be published.
In Brazil, the issue is clouded by politics and legal controversy
because much of the testimony has been secured through plea-bargains.
The South American country is relatively new to this tool to secure
witness statements, but it has been adopted with gusto by the
prosecutors involved in Operation Carwash, which is arguably the most
politically explosive investigation in Brazil’s history.
Prosecutors have been accused by defendants, including former
president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and legal counsel for the chief
executive of the Odebrecht conglomerate, of ethically dubious tactics,
such as holding suspects in jail for long periods of time, targeting
their families and offering generous deals in return for blowing the
whistle on high-profile suspects. Prosecutors say their methods are
necessary to ensure justice is done against powerful figures in business
and politics.
Few plea-bargainers have had as much of an impact as Machado Sr, who
secretly taped conversations that led to the downfall of three ministers
and could yet result in the fall of other senior politicians.
Associates say he cooperated with the investigation in return for a
generous deal for his sons.
copy https://www.theguardian.com/world
Former Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has criticised
prosecutors over the handling of scandal. Photograph: Evaristo
Sa/AFP/Getty Images
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário