Revealed: corrupt Brazilian businessman's UK property splurge

Source: Guardian

Revealed: corrupt Brazilian businessman's UK property splurge

Guardian investigation finds Expedito Machado – who has admitted laundering bribes for his father, a former senator – spent £21m on British real estate

Juliette Garside and Jonathan Watts

Thursday 28 July 2016 04.00 EDT


A Brazilian businessman who has admitted laundering millions of dollars in bribes went on a 12-month property spending spree in London and Leeds, a Guardian investigation has found.

Expedito Machado – the son of a former senator implicated in the massive corruption scandal at Petrobras – spent £21m on UK real estate in 2014 and 2015, buying office buildings in the City and Fleet Street, an apartment in Mayfair and a canal-side plot in the docklands area of Leeds.

. . .

At the heart of the inquiry is Expedito’s father, Sérgio Machado, who turned whistleblower after he left Petrobras’s distribution arm, Transpetro, in 2014.

Machado had been accused of operating a long-running bribery scheme and his evidence to prosecutors, which includes secret tape recordings, has already brought down three ministers. His accusations now risk implicating the interim president, Michel Temer, who took over following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in May.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/corrupt-brazilian-businessman-expedito-machado-uk-property-splurge