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Andorra blocks 37 million in bribes from Odebrecht from the environment of Alan García and Ricardo Martinelli

2022-10-06T10:53:31.758Z


The European country freezes 31 accounts in the BPA with 52 million Latin American leaders, businessmen and officials bought by the Brazilian construction company


The leaders, businessmen and high officials bribed by Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant that was involved in the largest corrupt plot in Latin America, will not be able to enjoy part of their hidden loot in Andorra.

A judge in this Principality ordered last March to keep 30 accounts frozen in the Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) and one in the Credit Andorrà with a total balance of 52.2 million euros (51 dollars), according to the documents to which EL PAÍS has had access.

The funds belong to former leaders, public employees and figureheads who collected from the infrastructure company in exchange for the award of public works.

And among the locked fortunes, there are three million euros (2.9 dollars) in deposits and opaque accounts linked to businessmen and senior officials who served during the second term of the late former Peruvian president Alan García (2006-2011).

Also, 34 million euros (33.5 dollars) connected with former charges and straw men of the former head of government of Panama Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014).

The embargo affects 282,701 euros ($279,393) from Alecksey Mosquera, former Minister of Electricity during the term of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and 1.4 million euros ($1.3) from two former Odebrecht executives.

The balance withheld (52 million) represents a quarter of the 200 million that the Brazilian construction company disbursed in Andorra -a country shielded until 2017 by banking secrecy- to buy the wills of 145 politicians and high-ranking officials from Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.

The three million that persecute Alan García

The blockade, ordered by the Andorran judge Stephanie García, contemplates seven accounts with a total balance of three million euros (2.9 dollars) linked to former senior officials and alleged figureheads who operated during the second presidential term of the Peruvian Alan García ( 2006-2011), who shot himself in 2019 before being arrested at his home in Lima for his connection to Odebrecht.

Thus, the lawyer and former deputy of Congress for the Popular Christian Party (PPC), Jorge Horacio Canepa Torre, will not be able to repatriate, due to judicial imperative, the million euros that he hid in his BPA account when it was seized.

This lawyer collected 1.2 million euros from Odebrecht in a Principality deposit in the name of his instrumental company Maxcrane Finance and later diverted part of his fortune

from him offshore

to New York and Hong Kong.

The blockade also extends to Edwin Martin Luyo Barrientos, former president of the Bidding Committee for sections 1 and 2 of the Lima metro, an organization that awarded Odebrecht a work worth more than 340 million euros (336 dollars) during the second Garcia's presidential term.

Luyo Barrientos has 1.2 million euros (1.1 dollars) frozen at Credit Andorrà in an account in his name.

The former official of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) of Peru, Santiago Chau Novoa, will also not be able to enjoy the 446,346 euros ($442,280) that his account registered with the BPA in July 2018. Chau Novoa, who also belonged to the Tender Committee of Line 1 of the Lima Metro, hid the funds it collected from the Brazilian construction giant in an account in the name of the opaque company Ultone Finance Limited.

The account in the BPA of Miguel Atala Herrera, vice president of the state firm Petróleos del Perú between 2008 and 2011, also appears among those frozen.

Despite the fact that this former director collected 1.1 million euros (one dollar) from the Brazilian construction company through the opaque firm Amarin Investment in the European Principality, the Andorran authorities have only been able to retain the figure recorded by his deposit in December 2015: €18,191 ($17,929).

Atala Herrera shared an account with his son, Samir Atala.

The magistrate has also ordered the seizure of the BPA account managed by Odebrecht of Gabriel Prado Ramos, former director of Citizen Security in Lima and former head of the municipal toll company Emape.

His Andorran deposit accumulates 171 euros (168 dollars).

The blockade also affects Juan Carlos Zevallos Ugarte, former director of Ositram, a Peruvian public body dedicated to coordinating transport infrastructure.

Zevallos Ugarte has 115,399 euros (113,737 dollars) withheld in Andorra.

This is a minimal amount compared to the 660,000 euros (591,360 dollars) received in the Principality by this official who managed the South Interoceanic Highway in Peru, a work carried out by Odebrecht for more than 1,184 million euros (1,166 dollars) that connects Peru and Brazil.

Rómulo Jorge Peñaranda Castañeda, president of the consulting firm Alpha Consult, "one of the largest winners" in Peru, according to the Andorran Police, is another of those affected by the judicial blockade.

He has 202,678 euros ($199,759) withheld.

The 34 million of the Martinelli universe

Andorran justice has locked eight accounts with a total balance of 34 million euros (33.5 dollars) connected with former leaders and figureheads close to former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014).

The blockade affects four deposits in the BPA of the parents of Demetrio Papadimitriu, Minister of the Presidency of Panama under Martinelli's mandate.

The accounts have a balance of 208,557 euros (205,741 euros).

A tiny figure compared to the 13 million euros (12.8 dollars) that the parents of the politician, Diamantis and María Bagatelas Papadimitriu, moved between 2010 and 2014 through a set of 45 accounts in the BPA and Credit Andorrà.

The clan of former president Martinelli bursts in linked to another of the BPA clients affected by the blockade, Roberto Brin Azcárraga, who appears in an account with 16.8 million euros (15 dollars) in the name of the opaque company Pachira Limited.

Brin Azcárraga worked as a director of the supermarket chain of the politician's family, Super 99, according to the newspaper La Prensa.

A New York Federal Court sentenced last May for money laundering to three years in prison for his dealings with Odebrecht the offspring of former president Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares.

A businessman connected to the latter, Gabriel Elias Alvarado Far, has 12.8 million euros ($11) withheld by court order in the BPA.

José Luis Saiz Villanueva, a businessman who confessed to having acted as a figurehead for Frank de Lima, Minister of Economy during Martinelli's five-year term, has 2.3 million euros (2.2 dollars) frozen in the account he managed at the BPA in the name of the company Herzone Overseas Limited.

Another of those involved in the Panamanian derivative of the Odebrecht plot, Olmedo Augusto Méndez Tribaldos, accumulates two million in the entity of the Principality of the Pyrenees that he will not be able to repatriate due to the judicial yoke.

The Panamanian Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has recently pointed out the latter as a straw man for former Minister De Lima.

A Correa minister, trapped in Andorra

Alecksey Mosquera, who was Ecuador's Minister of Electricity in the Rafael Correa government (2007-2017), has 282,701 euros ($279,138) withheld in the BPA.

The deposit appears in the name of the instrumental company (without activity) Percy Trading INC that it shares with the businessman Marcelo Raúl Endara Montenegro, who also controls another frozen account with 80,152 euros (79,142 dollars).

The former member of Correa's cabinet, who collected one million from Odebrecht in the Andorran bank, was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for money laundering for his link with the corrupt network.

Along with the bribed leaders, the embargo affects the former Odebrecht executives.

Former directors Luiz Eduardo Da Rocha and Olivio Rodrigues Junior have 1.2 million and 307,543 euros, respectively, paralyzed in BPA.

Rodrigues Junior was the man most trusted by the president of the company, Marcelo Odebrecht, and managed more than 200 million in the Principality.

In addition, the accountant of the Brazilian construction company OAS, Roberto Trombeta, who is being prosecuted in the Lava Jato case, the embryo of the Odebrecht plot, will not be able to withdraw by court order the 7.5 million euros (7.4 dollars) from his account in the BPA in the name of the instrumental company Kingsfield Consulting Corp.

A paradox that affects the accounts of the Angolan economist Edson N'Dalo Leite de Morais (173,339 euros) and Rosa Paulo Francisco Bento (29,449 euros), which were used to bribe leaders of this African country.

They also suffer from the Andorran tenaza.

investigacion@elpais.es

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-10-06

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