Open your eyes! What you see now many people know to be true but few want to face. If you pay attention, you might even be able to catch a whiff of the under-the-table bribes that supposedly made urban reform possible in the Porto Maravilha project.
As part of a plea bargain for Operation Car Wash, businessman Ricardo Pernambuco Júnior, from Carioca Engenharia, handed investigators a spreadsheet listing 22 deposits totaling US$4,680,297.05 in bribes supposedly paid to ex-representative Eduardo Cunha between August 10, 2011, and September 19, 2014. He affirmed that the businesses that carried out projects in the famous Porto Maravilha had to pay Cunha R$52 million, or 1.5% of the total value of the public money invested, for real estate development in the area.
The construction companies OAS and Odebrecht, as well as Eldorado, part of the JBS group, are some of the companies that received development funds from the Federal Bank through bribes, according to whistleblowers.
The money came from a workers’ fund at the Federal Bank and went straight into the pocket of the PMDB representative Eduardo Cunha. The Fed was left with the bill – that is, Brazilian citizens were. Eduardo Cunha has been in prison due to Operation Car Wash since October 19, 2016.
Keep your eyes wide open! Cunha’s bribe is just one more ghost haunting Rio’s port.