Newest Phase of Lava Jato Investigation Targets Bank

07/08/2016 - 09h32

The Federal Police have launched the 32nd phase of Operation Lava Jato, the so-called Ghost-Busters phase, which shifts its focus to question the unlawful activity of financial institutions suspected of money-laundering.

The new branch of the investigation begun this Thursday (7) and is targeting the Panamanian bank FPB, which, according to the investigation, operated in Brazil unlawfully. FPB had created a website in Portuguese and were opening accounts outside of the country for Brazilian clients.

	Jorge Araújo/Folhapress
	The new branch of the investigation is targeting the Panamanian bank FPB.

The institution is accused of playing "an important role" in transferring money outside of Brazil and in functioning clandestinely as an intermediary for bribes

The Federal Police claim the bank was involved in offshore dealings, was in conversation with "clients that were acting with dubious motives" and wanted to "shift large quantities of money at the margins of the national financial system".

It is not estimated how much money the bank moved around in Brazil nor how many clients it had in the country. According to the investigators, the objective of the 32nd phase is to figure out who was using the services and why. There are strong links between FPB and Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian legal firm investigated in the 22nd phase of Lava Jato and the company at the heart of the biggest global financial scandal in recent history, uncovered by the leaking of the Panama papers.

Bank employees asked Mossack to open offshore accounts under the names of clients and then make the transfers externally. The majority of the 44 offshore accounts identified by the Federal Police opened by Mossack on FPB's request were based in Panama.

The FPB Bank did not wish to comment on this report.

Translated by GILLIAN SOPHIE HARRIS
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