A former Ecuadorian official laundered millions in bribes in Miami. He just turned 10

Former Ecuadorian official convicted of laundering millions of dollars in bribes from Odebrecht engineering contractors in the Miami area – including the purchase of a luxury home in the exclusive neighborhood of Cocoplum – was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Former Ecuadorian comptroller Carlos Ramon Polit, 73, was convicted by a Miami federal jury in April of conspiring with his son and others to make the proceeds of corruption “disappear” by money laundering. money through investments in local real estate, restaurants, a dry sector. cleaning companies and others.

In making her decision on Polit’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found that he “used his position to further the money laundering scheme.” Williams focused on Polit’s criminal motivations, citing federal prosecutor Michael Berger’s assertion that he abused the trust of the Ecuadorian people by laundering $16.5 million in bribes so he could ” become massively rich” and “create generational wealth” for one’s family, including one’s family. son living in Miami.

“This project and others like it erode trust in government,” Williams concluded, referring to foreign corruption not only in Ecuador but also in Venezuela, Brazil and other Latin American countries. where millions of people are stolen and moved to the Miami area.

Polit’s son, John Christopher Polit, a stock broker, was not tried with his father. But in September, John Polit, 43, was accused of conspiring with him in a money laundering scheme by creating shell companies in Florida to hold valuable assets and “hide” them for the benefit of the Polits and of their loved ones between 2010 and 2018, according to an indictment. John Polit was granted a $14 million personal bond secured by his family’s assets and pleaded not guilty.

At the father’s sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutor Jill Simon said the former Ecuadorian official “directed the laundering of his bribes” and “had used his son John to make the money disappear.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Polit’s defense attorneys, Howard Srebnick, Jacqueline Perczek and Jeanelle Gomez, attempted to downplay the amount of money their client transferred to Miami, saying the figure was 16.5 million dollars advanced by the prosecution was “highly inflated”. While describing Polit as a “devoted father” who cared deeply for his family and others, they called for a sentence as low as six years. They compared her case to the 2022 trial of a former Venezuelan treasurer, Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen, and her husband, Adrian Jose Velasquez Figueroa, who were convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for laundering more than 100 million of dollars in bribes in Miami and Switzerland.

“The United States is profiting from these lawsuits and keeping the money,” Srebnick told the judge. “The government keeps the loot and does not return it to where it came from.”

However, Prosecutor Berger countered that in the case of Venezuela, the U.S. government cannot return the millions lost in the dozens of Venezuelan corruption cases brought in Miami, because that would amount to the corrupt regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

First to be tried in Odebrecht case in the United States

In April, a 12-person federal jury in Miami unanimously convicted Carlos Polit of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five related counts, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years. years in prison. Polit immediately turned himself in to prison authorities and was detained at the Miami Federal Detention Center.

His federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of between 12 1/2 and 15 1/2 years, although the judge gave him 10 years, citing in part his age and health for the the weakest sentence. The U.S. government plans to seize $16.5 million in Polit’s assets as part of a forfeiture order, which includes his former home in Cocoplum and an office building in Miami.

The two-week corruption trial not only spotlighted Polit, but also the giant Brazilian engineering company Odebrecht, which bribed the former Ecuadorian official for several years to make $100 million in government fines disappear for a hydroelectric power station project.

In 2016, Odebrecht admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes to officials in 12 countries, including Ecuador, resulting in the payment of approximately $2.6 billion in the part of a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department. Polit’s trial was an outgrowth of this high-profile scandal, offering for the first time the prosecution in the United States of a defendant linked to Odebrecht for conspiracy and money laundering.

At the father’s trial in Miami, his lawyers attempted to compartmentalize the roles of father and son, suggesting that Carlos Polit, who accepted bribes from Odebrecht contractors, had nothing to do with the proceeds of corruption allegedly laundered by John Polit in Miami. . But prosecutors showed, through a series of witnesses, wire transfers, bank deposits and investments, that their roles were intertwined in a classic conspiracy.

“He used his power to ensure he got his money,” Justice Department prosecutor Alexander Kramer told jurors in closing arguments, explaining that Carlos Polit did not need to launder the money for him. -even to be found guilty. “He was just as responsible as his son. When his son hid this money (in Miami)… Carlos Polit was breaking the law.”

Funds laundered to buy Cocoplum’s house

Polit’s son, John, was listed as “co-conspirator No. 1” in the original indictment charging the father, who was tried alone. John Polit’s name came up several times in bribe transfers through Panamanian and Miami bank accounts.

Money flowed through middlemen companies into nearly a dozen local real estate deals — suspicious transactions that were initially exposed in a McClatchy article published in the Miami Herald.

Carlos Polit’s defense attorneys have tried to distance their client from the alleged corruption-fueled money laundering scheme, saying the real criminals were the two former Odebrecht executives who took plea deals in Brazil and non-prosecution agreements with the US government for their testimony against Polit at the Miami trial.

Lived in a chic condo in Miami River

Polit, who after his arrest in March 2022 was released on $14 million bail and lived in a condominium along the Miami River, had enormous influence over Odebrecht when he became comptroller of Ecuador in 2010. Brazilian society committed criminal acts. contractual and technical violations on a $320 million power plant project being built near an active volcano in central Ecuador called Minas de San Francisco, prosecutors say.

Polit’s position, created to combat the fraudulent use of public funds, required him to approve public budgets that prosecutors say allowed him to demand more than $10 million in bribes from Odebrecht. In exchange, prosecutors say, Polit made the government fines disappear and allowed the engineering company to continue working in Ecuador.

The Miami case, investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, was built not only on an electronic trail of financial records, but also on witnesses and Odebrecht recordings.

Jose Santos, who worked as an engineering and construction manager at Odebrecht for 38 years, said he was asked to pay huge fines imposed on the company by the Ecuadorian government following the plant fiasco electric, then that he was extorted by Polit in 2010.

Santos said Polit gave Odebrecht an ultimatum: pay the comptroller an initial $6 million bribe to make the fines go away or never work in Ecuador again.

When asked by a prosecutor if he paid Polit a series of cash bribes, Santos replied: “Yes, I did.”

Initially, Santos said he delivered the cash in carry-on luggage to Polit at his Quito apartment, then arranged wire transfers and indirect payments through one of Odebrecht’s subcontractors in Ecuador .

During the Miami trial, prosecutors said that at one point Santos asked Polit what he was doing with all the bribe cash payments.

Polit told Santos: “My son in Miami is making the money disappear. »