Brazilian court acquits the Efromovich brothers, Avianca partners

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A federal judge in Brasilia acquitted the brothers Germán and José Efromovich, partners of the Avianca group, of corruption and money laundering, judicial sources informed.

The executives were denounced by the Prosecutor General’s Office in September 2020, accused of paying million-dollar bribes to obtain contracts with Transpetro, a subsidiary of the oil company Petrobras.

But, according to the sentence of Judge Marcus Vinicius Reis Bastos of the 12th Federal Court of Brasília, where the case was transferred, the denunciations of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not present evidence of the crimes, so the accusation does not have “just cause”.

For the judge, the complaint “does not contain a description of the crime and all its circumstances”, either because “it does not indicate the background of the crime necessary for the configuration of the crime of money laundering, or because it does not contain a logical narrative of the facts.”

The Prosecutor’s Office had denounced Germán Efromovich and Sérgio Machado, president of Transpetro, for corruption and money laundering; it also accused German’s brother José Efromovich.

The accusation was made in the framework of Operation Lava Jato, the largest anti-corruption operation in Brazil’s history, which put behind bars dozens of businessmen and politicians in the country, including top executives of Odebrecht and Petrobras.

The 7-year mega-operation also led to the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who spent 580 days in prison until a Supreme Court judge overturned his prison sentences after deciding that Judge Sergio Moro, who was responsible for the penalties in the case in Curitiba, had no jurisdiction over these cases.

Since last November, the Efromovich brothers had been on conditional release after an appellate court granted a habeas corpus petition and revoked the house arrest order issued in August 2020. Because of the conditional release, the two businessmen were still defending themselves at the trial at liberty.

The decision of the federal judge in Brasília can still be appealed by the Prosecutor’s Office.