Wife of Santana Admits to Receiving Money from Odebrecht

02/25/2016 - 10h02

On Wednesday (24) in an affidavit to the Federal Police, publicist Mônica Moura, the wife of marketer João Santana, said that the US$ 3 million that the couple's company received from Odebrecht in an account overseas were payments for campaign debt in three countries: Angola, Panama and Venezuela.

According to Moura's statement in Curitiba, the story behind the US$ 4,5 million paid by lobbyist Zwi Skornicki is a little more complicated.

	Guilherme Artigas/Fotoarena/Folhapress
	Santana and Moura were arrested by the Federal Police in São Paulo.

According to her, The MPLA (The Popular Movement for the LIberation of Angola), for which Santana led a presidential campaign in 2012, was the group that appointed Skornicki to pay the US$ 4.5 million.

Santana and Moura were arrested by the Federal Police after turning themselves in on Tuesday (23) in São Paulo, after federal judge Sergio Moro ordered their arrest, on charges of having received US$ 7.5 million illegally overseas.

The amount is the equivalent of approximately R$ 30 million and was not declared to the Federal Reserve by the couple or the companies where they are partners.

The Federal Police and the Lava Jato money laundering scheme investigators suspect that the US$ 3 million paid to João Santana by Odebrecht could be linked to Worker's Party campaigns and Petrobras' deflections, which the marketer's defense vehemently denies.

Santana managed Lula's campaign in 2006 and Dilma Rousseff's in 2010 and 2014.

Santana and Moura's lawyer, Fabio Tofic Simantob, said that the only crime the couple is guilty of is maintaining undeclared funds overseas.

The Folha attempted to reach Odebrecht regarding Moura's statement, but the company refused to comment. The report was not able to locate Zwi Skornicki's advisors in Rio.

Translated by SUGHEY RAMIREZ
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