Cabral's scheme used car dealerships to launder money, says Federal Police.
This is according to Operation Mascate, the new phase of Calicute; according to the Federal Police, the operator Ari Ferreira da Costa Filho, known as 'Arizinho' and the target of a preventive arrest warrant, used dealerships owned by his family to launder bribe money in the scheme led by former Rio governor Sérgio Cabral; at least R$ 10 million were allegedly laundered through various sham contracts and real estate purchases over eight years;
Rio 247- The corruption scheme led by former Rio de Janeiro governor Sérgio Cabral (PMDB) also involved car dealerships in the state. This is according to Operation Mascate, a new phase of Operation Calicute. According to the Federal Police, operator Ari Ferreira da Costa Filho, known as 'Arizinho' and the target of an arrest warrant, used his family's dealerships to launder bribe money. At least R$ 10 million was allegedly laundered through various sham contracts and real estate purchases over eight years. Of this amount, R$ 8 million allegedly went to members of the PMDB party, according to investigators. Part of the money was allegedly used to purchase seven properties registered in the name of a real estate company owned by Ari himself. These new revelations were published on Fausto Macedo's blog.
Launched a week ago, Operation Efficiency identified that the former governor of Rio de Janeiro allegedly received at least US$78 million in accounts held abroad by money launderers Renato and Marcelo Chaber, who decided to cooperate with the investigations and revealed how the PMDB politician's financial scheme worked. This scheme allegedly involved laundering at least US$100 million in bribes collected from large construction companies that held contracts with Cabral's administration during his two terms in office (2007 to 2014).
Since November 2016, the Federal Police have arrested at least nine people accused of acting as financial operators in Cabral's scheme, including money launderers and those responsible for collecting and transporting illicit payments.
Currently, Cabral, his wife, and other members of his group are facing criminal charges in the Lava Jato Operation in Curitiba for allegedly benefiting from bribes in works at the Petrobras Petrochemical Complex (Comperj) and also from Operation Calicute in Rio, which identified suspicions of illegal payments involving other works of the Cabral government, such as the renovation of the Maracanã stadium.