The Andorran justice system is investigating the founder of Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant that perpetrated the largest bribery scheme in America, for integrating a scheme that paid 237 million euros in illegal commissions through an intricate corporate network and opaque accounts. in this European country, according to the documents to which EL PAÍS has had access.
A judge from Andorra, a microstate of 77,000 inhabitants that until 2017 was shielded by banking secrecy, is investigating businessman Marcelo Odebrecht and his conglomerate for these events. A mass that employed 168,000 workers in 28 countries and made public works its main source of profits.
Under the name of the Pernambuco case, the investigations that track the businessman and his company investigate the commission of a possible crime of money laundering. The case landed in the Andorran courts in 2015, when one of the two entities that hosted the encrypted accounts created to pay Odebrecht commissions, the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), was intervened for an alleged crime of money laundering.
Meinl Bank, an entity from the Caribbean country Antigua and Barbuda, was the other bank that was part of the corrupt mechanism. And in this mechanism of rotting briefcases the founder of the construction company allegedly played a key role. “[Marcelo Odebrecht] appears involved in an important matter of bribery, corruption and money laundering that affects all of Latin America,” indicates the Andorran magistrate in one of her orders.
The bribes ended up – according to investigators – in the pockets of 145 leaders, public employees and front men who participated in the construction company’s public works awarding processes in Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.
The new documents to which this newspaper has had access reveal that the corporate and account network through which the commission money circulated moved more than 237 million euros. The commercial swarm spread with the silence of complicity through tentacles in Panama, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal and Antigua and Barbuda.
One of the two companies used by Odebrecht to pay bribes—the company incorporated in 2005 in Antigua and Barbuda Klienfeld Services Ltd—was listed as the owner of an account in the BPA that received payments worth the latter sum. The second inactive firm that Odebrecht turned to to buy the will of politicians—the Panamanian Aeon Group—was used to open an account at the BPA that collected more than 71 million.
Through internal transfers, a system that leaves no trace, Odebrecht sent the money to deposits in the same bank that the construction company opened to the politicians, officials and businessmen involved in the awards. To mask these transactions, the payments were disguised as alleged payments for non-existent services. And the money later landed in accounts encrypted or established in the name of Panamanian companies. A model of armor designed with precision so as not to raise suspicions.
The list of those awarded by Odebrecht’s illegal commissions through Andorra includes Demetrio Papadimitriu, who was Minister of the Presidency and campaign manager of former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014). The construction company paid Papadimitriu’s parents – at least – 2.1 million euros, as revealed by this newspaper.
Alecksey Mosquera, former Minister of Electricity of Ecuador during the mandate of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), collected one million from Odebrecht in the BPA with an account opened in the name of an instrumental firm.
A few businessmen and senior officials from the second presidential term of Peruvian Alan García (2006-2011) were also showered by the construction company’s generosity, who committed suicide by shooting himself in 2019 before being arrested at his home in Lima for his relationship with Odebrecht. The former deputy of the Popular Christian Party (PPC) Jorge Horacio Canepa Torre received 1.2 million from the Brazilian giant. The same sum that the former president of the Tender Committee for sections 1 and 2 of the Lima metro pocketed. The former official of the Ministry of Transport and Tenders (MTC) of Peru Santiago Chau Novoa, for his part, received just under half a million. And the former vice president of the state firm Petróleos de Perú collected 1.1 million in the European country in an account he shared with his son.
Xavier Jordana, lawyer in Andorra for Marcelo Odebrecht, explains that his clients decline to assess the judicial investigation in the Pyrenean principality. “[Mis clientes] “They want the case to be clarified as soon as possible because there are many years of proceedings and general actions without any practical conclusion in the summary.” Jordana thus alludes to the fact that, almost 10 years after the BPA’s intervention, there is no ruling on the various corrupt plots that took place in the bank.
According to this lawyer: “Marcelo Odebrecht did not intervene at all in the actions that took place in Andorra. He has never come to the Principality, he has no account nor has he intervened in anything and as far as he is concerned the case – in my opinion – will have to be dismissed.”
The Odebrecht court case in Andorra joins other fronts in the courts of the Brazilian construction giant. The company has already acknowledged before the Brazilian justice system that it has financed electoral campaigns and candidates in America since 2001. And that it paid bribes worth – at least – 788 million dollars (720 million euros).
The gear of briefcases and dirty money splashed Michel Temer (Brazil), Juan Manuel Santos (Colombia), Danilo Medina (Dominican Republic), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil) and Ollanta Humala (Peru).
Odebrecht’s corrupt practices led the company to pay a fine of $3.5 billion to the authorities of Brazil, the United States and Switzerland. The shadow of his bribes was projected since 2001 to 12 countries.
investigacion@elpais.es