Days before the liquidation of the and the arrest of Daniel Vorcaro, the federal deputy (PP) tried to approve a project imposing limits on the , making it dependent on the state governors.
The PF remains respected. There are no records of “neutralized” white-collar criminals, with point-blank shootings, such as the elimination of residents of the outskirts by the police of Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans).
“While the Federal Police will take care of the misdeeds and the BC will collect the debris left by Master in the financial market, the most important task is to close the legal loopholes. Neither in regulation, nor in the practice of brokers, is there anything that prevents the Master case from happening again”, stated the newspaper Valor in an editorial.
“Bank failures sometimes expose, in addition to management and supervision problems, political connections and even suspicions of criminal practices — when they become scandals. This was the case, for example, with the Economic and the National, and the Master’s case is now taking this path”, stated the Sheet em .
When the Federal Police, the Federal Public Ministry and the Federal Court work in concert and without competing for the spotlight, investigations usually have a beginning, middle and end.
It was like that in the Nacional mega-fraud. The Federal Police proved fictitious operations in the institution of the traditional Magalhães Pinto family from Minas Gerais.
At the time of the investigations, the son of then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), Paulo Henrique, was married to Ana Lúcia Magalhães Pinto, daughter of the banker and former Minister of Foreign Affairs José de Magalhães Pinto.
Nacional’s former controller, Marcos Magalhães Pinto, and eight former directors of the bank were convicted and arrested. In , Marcos accused the BC and the FHC government of “donating” Nacional to Unibanco.
Between 1988 and 1995, Nacional presented unreal revenues of US$16.9 billion, thanks to fictitious accounts.
In 1998, the Sheet published the results of an accounting examination by the Federal Police Criminalistics Institute, concluding that Nacional’s fraud could have been detected by KPMG Peat Marwick, the bank’s external audit firm.
11 former KPMG employees worked at Nacional. The concluded that fraud would have been identified if basic audit procedures had been applied.
Authorized by then, I consulted the six volumes of the main records, at the 4th Court of the Judiciary Section of Rio de Janeiro.
I located an accounting form, with KPMG letterhead, with handwritten pencil calculations of dividends (benefits distributed to shareholders) on fictitious profits, artificially inflating the bank’s equity.
Nacional maintained 652 fictitious current accounts, originating from unpaid loans by small companies and maintained as if they were normal credits, with maturities altered to allow for the addition of interest and correction.
According to public prosecutors Silvana Góes and Rogério Nascimento, authors of the complaint, the false data was always accessible to the auditor, who “carefully selected exactly what he should not audit, with no doubt that he acted intentionally.”
“The case of Nacional scandalized me: the fifth largest bank in Brazil, with more than a million depositors, ten years ago was bankrupt by US$10 billion, without the BC realizing it,” Rogério told Ziraldo Alves Pinto on “.
Due to the auditor’s omission, he did not register the balance sheets with the Commercial Board. The statements were unreal. Ernst & Young participated in negotiations with the BC to rescue the bank, confusing the role of independent auditor with that of consultant.
Stephen Kanitz, a balance sheet expert, said: “We are not an essentially corrupt country. We are poorly audited.”
The Master case confirms the . The pressure to inhibit the Federal Police reveals an essentially corrupt bloc in the Chamber.
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