A report from El País shows the workings of the million-dollar bribe scheme within the national bank, Caixa Economica Federal, with ex-federal deputy Eduardo Cunha (PMDB) at its center.
In 2011, it was Cunha who guaranteed that Fabio Cleto, ex-vice president of Government financing and the Caixa lotteries, obtained the second most important position in the national bank. “Over nearly five years, the executive was part of the Board of Trustees of FGTS as well as the investment committee FI-FGTS, a fund linked to the FGTS compulsory savings to which Brazilian workers have rights. There, he enjoyed a power which seduced corrupt and corrupting men alike. He was the one who decided where the second largest bank in Brazil should invest its billions of dollars in funds in order to gain profit,” explains the report.
In this position, “Cunha’s man” had the function of indicating projects in which Caixa, which assumed all the costs in the public-private partnerships (PPPs) of the Rio de Janeiro Port area, should invest its money in order to grow the fund. But, according to investigations, it was Cunha who made the investment decisions. As reported by the material, “they both met weekly and Cunha determined who the money would be sent to, and received bribes for this. Cleto breached the privacy which his position demanded in passing information about ongoing projects to the deputy. OAS, Odebrecht, and the business Eldorado, of the JBS group, are some of the companies which received Caixa resources for infrastructure projects through bribery schemes involving Cleto and Cunha.”
Eduardo Cunha is accused of receiving R$52 million in bribes through the scheme, according to whistleblower Ricardo Pernambuco Junior, of the company Carioca Engenharia. At the end of 2015, Cleto was targeted by operation Catilinárias of the Federal Police. In it, the executive gave details of the bribery scheme which involved big businesses and the FGTS investment fund responsible for billions of real.