RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Independent investigative media Agência Pública in Brazil has exposed allegations of sexual abuse of hundreds of underage girls by implicating the late Samuel Klein, one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs. His activities allegedly lasted until his death in 2013.
Samuel Klein was a Polish-Brazilian business magnate and philanthropist who founded the Casas Bahia department store chain in Brazil, turning him into the country’s top retailer.
This, along with his tendency to use massive warehouses for his goods, including the largest single warehouse in South America, led him to be known in the 1990s as the “Sam Walton of Brazil.”
Was the deceased billionaire a sexual predator disguised as a hero? The disclosure of sexual abuse by Brazilian entrepreneur Samuel Klein, seven years after his death, is all the more disturbing in Brazil as many witnesses to his orgies have remained silent for decades.
Agência Pública, the independent investigative media that uncovered the crimes last April, cross-referenced the testimonies of 38 different sources, including alleged victims, employees and neighbors of Samuel Klein. The story is particularly disturbing as it reveals a man who repeatedly bribed his way to impunity with the country’s best attorneys.
Until recently, Samuel Klein enjoyed a certain aura in Brazil, the result of his tragic history and success.
Born in 1923, this Polish Jew experienced the horrors of the Majdanek concentration camp at the age of 19, from which he managed to escape. However, his mother and 5 siblings did not survive the barbarity of the Treblinka camp. At the end of the war, he tried to leave Europe for the United States but was not granted a visa.
Abuse until 2013?
He headed first to Bolivia and then to Brazil, where an American-style success story began: from a street vendor in the town of São Caetano do Sul, ia suburb of the São Paulo capital, he became one of the most prominent entrepreneurs in the country, at the head of a chain of nearly 500 household appliance stores.
He was also known as a philanthropist. When he died in 2014, two of his grandchildren founded the Samuel Klein Institute to fund charities for schools and needy students.
According to new revelations published by the same team of reporters on Monday, July 5, the abuses lasted until 2013, four years after the start of negotiations with the Casino Group to initiate a merger between its Brazilian subsidiary, Pão de Açucar, and Samuel Klein’s chain, Casas Bahia, to create the Globex Utilidades group where Samuel Klein was then one of the largest shareholders.
Investigation into the son…and then into the father
Before uncovering the truth, Agência Pública’s journalists were investigating one of Samuel Klein’s three sons, accused of rape by several women. “While researching the lawsuits against Saul Klein, we actually uncovered lawsuits against his father, brought by women who were abused as children.
In a few days we found about 10 women accusing Samuel Klein of sexual abuse when they were between 9 and 14 years old,” explains one of the journalists and Pública’s director Thiago Domenici.
The investigation lasted four months and brought to light 26 sexual abuse cases, as well as testimony, documents, photos and videos. In one of them, Samuel Klein is seen surrounded by 20 girls in bathing suits in 1994 during his birthday party at one of his properties where he allegedly molested hundreds of children and teenagers since the 1980s.
The investigators allege the tycoon’s purported philanthropy existed only to attract needy children, to whom he offered money, meals and goods in exchange for sexual favors. According to the testimonies collected, the abuse also occurred at the group’s headquarters in São Caetano do Sul, where Samuel Klein had his office until his death.
Testimony from employees describe the endless parade of girls coming to get their gifts or boarding a helicopter to reach the tycoon’s properties. According to these witnesses, it was difficult to ignore what was going on.
Excessive spending
Between 2009 and 2010, Samuel Klein, then 86 years old, had also been involved in negotiations for the merger with Casino’s subsidiary, alongside his eldest son Michael, who was then running the group. In 2012, Valor Econômico newspaper mentioned “tense relations between the two partners.”
The cause was the Klein family’s spending, which was considered excessive. The reports mention helicopters, yachts and a very large security service, all of which are widely mentioned in the testimony against Samuel Klein.