João Santana and his wife have arrest extended by Court
Federal Judge Sérgio Moro decided on Friday (Feb. 26) to extend for another five days the arrest of adman João Santana and his wife, Mônica Moura, in addition to Odebrecht employee Maria Lúcia Tavares. Moro comply with the request made by the federal police and the Public Prosecution Office.
They have been arrested by the 23th stage of Operation Car Wash, known as Operation Acarajé. In the same sentence, Moro decided to release Vinicius Veiga Borin, businessman connected to an offshore company probed under Operation Car Wash, and Benedicto Barbosa da Silva, executive of Odebrecht.
According to the federal police, there is evidence that adman João Santana received $1 million from Odebrecht construction company in Brazil, and the documents seized are different from the ones presented by the couple in testimonies made this week. Police suspects that the money comes from a corruption scheme at Petrobras.
In the sentence, Moro said they did not explain, in testimonies given to the federal police, the reasons for receveing alleged payments from Odebrecht for the campaigns in Venezuela and Angola.
According to the judge, there is evidence confirming that the payments made by Odebrecht in Santana's overseas accounts came from the same bank account used by the contractor for "paying bribes" to former Petrobras' CEOs.
For Sérgio Moro, these facts have grown the federal police's suspicions that Santana and his wife received kickbacks from Odebrecht in Brazil. He mentioned an information sheet that the federal police attached to the sentence to extend the couple's arrest showing that the adman allegedly received $6.11 million in 2014 in Brazil.
Moro has also criticized the fact that the couple's defense admitted that the only crime they had committed was not to declare bank accounts used to receive payments from Odebrecht overseas. For the judge, we cannot "trivialize charges with fraud, using illicit funds or at least unrecorded funds, from election campaigns, neither in Brazil nor abroad. We need to consider the consequent impact upon the integrity of the democratic political process. Therefore, nothing is considered banal on these conducts."
Translated by Amarílis Anchieta
Fonte: João Santana and his wife have arrest extended by Court
