Ex-Odebrecht Exec Testified in Brazil About Bribes

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Former Odebrecht executive, Fernando Migliaccio, told Lava Jato (Carwash) investigators during his plea bargaining testimony yesterday (May 16th) that the company used 30 to 40 foreign accounts for the payment of bribes and confirmed that he made Odebrecht’s contribution to Rousseff’s 2014 presidential campaign.

The former director confirmed the statements made by former CEO Marcelo Odebrecht that the company made election donations not only to the Rousseff-Temer ticket in 2014 in Brazil but also contributed to presidential campaigns in Angola, Dominican Republic, Panama and Venezuela, through the Rousseff’s marketer João Santana.

Federal investigators say that in 2014 Migliaccio, a director at Odebrecht, was put in charge of closing down the foreign accounts, due to the advancement of the Lava Jato investigations. According to the former executive the goal was to close the accounts that were active abroad and remit the values back to the company in Brazil.

“To close the accounts, an operation was set up whereby the sum of all remaining balances would be returned to Odebrecht,” Migliaccio said in his testimony.

According to the former executive the new bribe payment system was installed in 2015 and maintained until January of last year, when Migliaccio was arrested.

According to local media approximately US$25 million were retrieved by the operation before executives started to be arrested and accounts blocked by authorities.

In his agreement, Migliaccio agreed to pay a fine of R$5 million. In addition, prosecutors confiscated eight pounds of gold from the former executive.

Last month, Minister Edson Fachin authorized the opening of 76 inquiries to investigate politicians with a privileged forum named in the plea-bargaining testimonies from 77 former Odebrecht executives.