Ex-Ecuadorian official accused of laundering $10 million in bribes faces trial in Miami

The corruption trial of a former senior Ecuadorian official charged with laundering more than $10 million in bribes through Miami’s banking system and real estate market may not feature a household name as a defendant.

But the Brazilian company accused of paying off Ecuador’s ex-comptroller, Carlos Ramon Polit, is one of the biggest engineering and construction firms in the world. Its name is Odebrecht, which admitted to a massive bribery scheme across the Americas in 2016 and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department.

Polit’s trial, a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, started Tuesday with opening statements in Miami federal court, offering for the first time the prosecution of an Odebrecht-linked defendant on conspiracy and money laundering charges in the United States.

Polit, 73, who was arrested in Miami in March 2022, was portrayed by federal prosecutors as an influential Ecuadorian bureaucrat who extorted the conglomerate for millions of dollars in cash bribes in exchange for making more than $100 million in government fines on a hydroelectric power-plant project disappear.

“He was one of the most powerful people in Ecuador — someone you didn’t want as an enemy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Berger told the 12-person jury in a packed federal courtroom. “Millions of dollars of these bribes were laundered into Miami with the help of the defendant’s son.”

“In the end, Odebrecht got what it paid for: the removal of those $100 million in fines,” said Berger, noting that two of the Brazilian firm’s former executives who received non-prosecution deals with the U.S. government are key witnesses against Polit.

Polit’s son, John, a Miami banker, has not been charged with the father, who is standing trial alone. It remains unclear whether John Polit will be charged in the aftermath of the three-week trial, but his name came up repeatedly during opening statements Tuesday in connection with the alleged bribery payments moving through Panamanian and Miami banking accounts through intermediary companies into several local real estate deals, including the purchase of an office building and a luxury home in exclusive Cocoplum in Coral Gables.

Carlos Polit’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, tried to distance his client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme.

“Carlos Ramon Polit did not launder a single dollar” into Miami, Srebnick told the jurors, describing his client as a former private businessman who joined Ecuador’s government as its comptroller in 2010. “Not a single dollar bill was found in the possession of Carlos Ramon Polit.”

Srebnick said the real criminals are the two former Odebrecht executives who cut plea deals in Brazil and non-prosecution agreements with the U.S. government for their testimony against Polit.

“They blame Carlos Polit, so they don’t go to jail,” Srebnick told the jurors.

Polit, who after his arrest was released on an $18 million bond and lives in a condo high-rise along the Miami River, wielded tremendous sway over Odebrecht after it was found to have committed contractural and technical violations on the $320 million power-plant project built near an active volcano in central Ecuador called Minas de San Francisco, according to federal prosecutors.

Polit’s position, which was created to combat the fraudulent use of government funds, required him to sign off on public budgets that prosecutors say enabled him to demand more than $10 million in bribery payments from Odebrecht. In exchange, prosecutors contend, Polit made government fines go away and allow the engineering firm to continue working in Ecuador.

The case, probed by Homeland Security Investigations, is built upon an electronic trail of financial records and cooperating witnesses.

One of them took the witness stand after opening statements Tuesday. Jose Santos, who worked as an engineering and construction executive at Odebrecht for 38 years, testified that he was asked to resolve the company’s huge fines with the Ecuadorian government over the power-plant fiasco and then found himself being extorted by Polit.

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

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

Santos also acknowledged that he pleaded guilty in Brazil in 2016 to the Polit-related bribery charges and was sentenced to more than two years of house arrest and community service along with a fine. But he said he had not begun the sentence.

Wanted in Ecuador

Polit also faces an extradition request by Ecuador, where he was tried and convicted in absentia because he had left for Miami before the 2018 trial in his native country. His son, John, who had also worked as securities broker in Miami, was convicted in Ecuador of being an accomplice in connection with his father’s case. But his conviction in Ecuador was overturned in 2020.

Five years ago, McClatchy-Miami Herald and other news media collaborated on an investigative project that zeroed in on Odebrecht’s parallel off-books accounting system. Leaked documents showed links between Polit’s Miami-based son and a U.S. shell company, Ventures Overseas LLC, which became a pass-through for the alleged bribery payments by Odebrecht.

The Polits were the focus of a McClatchy-Miami Herald investigation that showed the son had taken on mortgages on several pricey properties in the Miami area, including a luxurious home in Cocoplum, that had earlier been purchased outright.

Venture Overseas was at the end of a chain of financial transfers between anonymous shell companies that began with one controlled by Odebrecht S.A. called Kleinfeld Services. Company officials have admitted Kleinfeld was one of several used in an off-books accounting system called Drousys that was used to pay bribes in exchange for public works contracts.

The Polits were convicted in Ecuador in 2018 on extortion charges that involved receiving bribe money from Kleinfeld. They insisted they were the targets of political persecution.

Berger, the prosecutor, highlighted all of these companies and connections during his opening statement on Tuesday, pointing out that the Odebrecht executive, Santos, asked Polit what he was doing with all the bribery cash payments.

According to the prosecutor, Polit told Santos: “My son in Miami makes the money disappear.”