This screenshot of a video shown on CNN’s Spanish-language website shows former Ecuadorean Comptroller General Carlos Polit declaring himself ‘totally persecuted’ by prosecutors in Ecuador. He made his comments in an interview that aired on CNN on March 9, 2018, during which he denied extorting bribes from Brazilian engineering giant Odebrecht S.A.
Lawyers for a former high-ranking Ecuador official accused of taking more than $10 million in bribes and laundering the money in Miami tried to stir up doubt in the minds of federal jurors during his federal trial.
They argued that Carlos Ramon Polit didn’t touch a single dollar that prosecutors say was laundered through local banks into Miami-area real estate purchases by his son, John Polit, a banker who handled the transactions but didn’t stand trial with him.
“You have every reason to doubt,” defense attorney Howard Srebnick told the Miami federal jury during closing arguments on Monday. “What evidence do you see that Carlos Polit engaged in a single transaction in the United States? [There’s] not one shred of evidence.”
The jury didn’t buy it.
On Tuesday, the dozen jurors unanimously found the 73-year-old former Ecuadorian government comptroller guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering and five related counts, with each offense carrying up to 20 years in prison. The jurors took six hours, starting Monday afternoon, to reach their guilty verdicts before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. She must still set a sentencing date.
The two-week corruption trial not only showcased Polit, but the giant Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, which bribed the former Ecuadorian official over several years to make $100 million in government fines on a hydroelectric power plant project disappear.
In 2016, Odebrecht admitted to a massive bribery scheme across the Americas and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department. Polit’s trial was a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, offering for the first time the prosecution of an Odebrecht-linked defendant on conspiracy and money laundering charges in the United States.
“He used his power to ensure he got his money,” Justice Department prosecutor Alexander Kramer told the jurors in closing arguments, explaining that Polit didn’t have to launder the money himself to be found guilty. “He was just as responsible as his son. When his son was hiding that money [in Miami] … that was Carlos Polit breaking the law.”
Polit’s son, John, was listed as “co-conspirator 1” in an indictment charging the father, who stood trial alone. It remains unclear whether John Polit will be charged, but his name came up repeatedly in the bribery payments moving through Panamanian and Miami banking accounts. The money moved through intermediary companies into nearly a dozen local real estate deals, including the purchase of a Miami office building and a luxury home in exclusive Cocoplum in Coral Gables.
Carlos Polit’s defense attorneys, Srebnick and Jacqueline Perczek, tried to distance their client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme, saying the real criminals were 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 at the Miami trial.
Lived in swanky Miami River condo
Polit, who after his arrest in March 2022 was released on an $18 million bond and lived in a condo high-rise along the Miami River, wielded tremendous sway over Odebrecht when he became Ecuador’s comptroller in 2010. The Brazilian firm was found to have committed contractual 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 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 the government fines go away and allowed the engineering firm to continue working in Ecuador.
“The defendant was a high-ranking official in Ecuador whose position required him to protect public funds,” said Justice Department prosecutor Jill Simon, who worked on the case with colleagues Michael Berger and Kramer.
“Instead of just doing his job, the defendant abused his position of tremendous power and he took bribes,” Simon said. “The defendant was supposed to prevent corruption. Instead, he profited from it.”
The case, probed by Homeland Security Investigations, was built upon an electronic trail of financial records, cooperating witnesses and recordings.
Ex-Odebrecht executive admits to paying bribes
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 in 2010.
Santos said Polit offered Odebrecht an ultimatum: Pay the 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.”
At first, Santos delivered the cash in a carry-on bag to Polit at his apartment in Quito, and then he arranged for wire transfers and indirect payments by one of Odebrecht’s subcontractors in Ecuador.
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.
As part of the indictment, prosecutors also accused Polit of a separate conspiracy involving his acceptance of $510,000 in bribery payments from an insurance executive who lost his Ecuadorian government contracts to a rival businessman. After the payments were made, Polit restored his business dealings with the government, prosecutors said. Some of that money was also transferred to Miami, prosecutors said.
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 the year before the 2018 trial in his native country. His son, John, who also worked as a securities broker in Miami, was convicted in Ecuador of being an accomplice in connection with his father’s case. But the son’s conviction in Ecuador was later overturned.
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 Odebrecht’s bribery payments to the father.
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 the 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 called Kleinfeld Services. Company officials have admitted Kleinfeld was one of several used in an off-books accounting system that was used to pay bribes in exchange for public works contracts.
During the Miami trial, the team of prosecutors highlighted all of these companies and connections, pointing out that the Odebrecht executive, Santos, asked Polit what he was doing with all the bribery cash payments.
Polit told Santos: “My son in Miami makes the money disappear.”