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The São Paulo Public Prosecution Service (), the Federal Police () and the IRS believe in a “purification”, that is, a kind of “cleaning” of the financial market, from the three operations triggered at the end of August with the objective of dismantling a billionaire fraud scheme and money laundering in the fuel sector.
Investigations pointed out that the scams used investment funds of the largest financial center in the country, which operate as a black box, making it difficult to identify the final beneficiary of resources. According to the organs investigating the scheme, the stratagem was involved in members of the first command of the capital ().
So far, investigations into the criminal group’s financial engineering have focused on identifying the funds and their respective managers. The current stage of the analysis, therefore, falls on legal entities. From now on, he told the Metropolis A source linked to investigations, the focus will be directed to individuals.
That is, investigators want to know who authorized the operation of these funds and why these same people – notably, those responsible for the managers – did not comply with obligations of compliance, as practices are called that a company acts in accordance with the law.
Managers Failures
This is because, in the evaluation of those responsible for the investigations, there were a profusion of signs that indicated problems in at least 40 funds of investments listed in the investigation, with estimated equity of R $ 30 billion. Such evidence included, for example, failures of registration analysis and the financial capacity of the funds of the backgrounds – many of them were “oranges.”
In the group’s financial structure, the main role of these funds was to capture the money of illicit origin-via bank deposits and transfers made by fintechs through ““, they do not identify their holders-to reinvest it in new business. This besides buying goods for the use of the scheme bosses.
Among the acquisitions found, according to the IRS, are a port terminal, four alcohol plants – and two others in the process of acquisition – 1,600 trucks for the transportation of fuel and over 100 properties. Among them, six farms in the interior of São Paulo, valued at $ 31 million, and a residence in Trancoso, Bahia, bought for $ 13 million.
Layer concealment
Faria Lima’s “black cash backgrounds” also contributed to increasing the opacity of the operation. According to a member of Operation Hidden Carbon, triggered by MPSP, often when investigators were trying to identify the owner of a façade company used in the scheme, it was stated that it belonged to an investment fund.
In investigating the owners of this fund, but they reached another fund, and so on. In practice, there was a scheme with several overlapping layers, used to hide the real owners of companies and real estate.
According to the tax authorities, the “evidence points out that these funds are used as a patrimonial concealment and shielding market and suggest that their administrators were aware and contributed to the scheme, including not fulfilling obligations with the IRS, so that their movement and that of their quota holders were hidden from inspection.”
Funds profile
Most of the funds listed by the investigators in the hidden carbon are real estate, used notably for the concealment of heritage. Others are credit rights (financial assets such as duplicates, debts, debentures, precatory, representing the right of a company or person to receive future values).
There are also numerous multimarket funds, which are more flexible. They can house fixed income, coins, actions and crypto applications, for example. According to the IRS, another feature of the funds used in the scheme is the fact that they are closed, which limit the entry of investors, or even, with only one quotaholder.
