Posted on 08/07/2015 10:49:46 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Alberto Youssef, a convicted money launderer and former bon vivant, sat in a Brazilian jail cell in March of last year, getting ready to tell his lawyers a story. It was about an elaborate bribery scheme involving Petrobras, the government-controlled oil giant. He opened with a dire prediction.
“Guys,” Mr. Youssef said, “if I speak, the republic is going to fall.”
To those lawyers, Tracy Reinaldet and Adriano Bretas, who recently recounted the conversation, this sounded a tad melodramatic. But then Mr. Youssef took a piece of paper and started writing the names of participants in what would soon become known as the Petrobras scandal. Mr. Reinaldet looked at the names and asked, not for the last time that day, “Are you serious?”
“We were shocked,” he recalled, sitting in a conference room in his law office in downtown Curitiba, the capital of the southern state of Paraná, one morning in June. “It was kind of like, in Brazil, we know that corruption is a monster. But we never really see the monster. This was like seeing the monster.”
What Mr. Youssef described to his lawyers, and then to prosecutors after he signed a plea agreement last year, is a fraud that has destabilized the country’s political system, helped tilt the economy into recession and left thousands unemployed. It has all but devastated Brazil’s status as an up-and-comer on the world stage.
The Petrobras scandal would read as pure tragedy were it not filled with a cast of Hollywood-ready characters and their lavish props. The latter include a huge inventory of gifts — Rolex watches, $3,000 bottles of wine, yachts, helicopters and prostitutes. There were also staggering sums of money, most of it flowing through a network of phantom corporations . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Link to story on Soros and Petrobras.
That sounds like a massive screw-up on the part of Mr. Soros.
Likely the reduction paid for the entire position with a profit, and the remainder remains a share in the reserves and resources held by the company if Brazil doesn’t get all Hugo on them.
Socialism in action. I wonder if anyone will think to ask Bernie Sanders why he thinks it would be wise to run the U.S. economy along these lines.
If Bernie were honest, he would say that such bribery, kickbacks, payoffs, etc are allowed by the elite ruling class under socialism. Now, I a lower class citizen tries to climb the ladder this way, they are harshly prosecuted.
Socialism is an “agrees-with-me” club where the rules do not apply.
It’s like people keep forgetting that other people are human and are greedy, self-serving rascals.
Where is SOROS in all of this??
Soros, through his hedge fund Fund Management LLC, bought $1 billion of Petrobras stock. Earlier this year he sold off at least half of it. It's likely he wasn't involved in the corporate corruption.
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