A former official from Ecuador laundered multi-million-dollar bribes in Miami. He just got 10 years

A former Ecuadorian official convicted of laundering multimillion-dollar bribes from Odebrecht engineering contractors in the Miami area – including the purchase of a luxury home in the upscale Cocoplum neighborhood – was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Former Ecuadorian controller Carlos Ramon Polit (73) was found in April by a federal jury in Miami guilty of conspiring with his son and others to “disappear” bribe proceeds by laundering money through investments in local real estate, restaurants, a drying house cleaner and other companies.

In deciding Polit’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found that he “used his position to advance a money laundering scheme.” Williams focused on Polit’s criminal motives, citing federal prosecutor Michael Berger’s claim that he abused the trust of the Ecuadorian people by spending $16.5 million in bribes so he could “significantly enrich himself” and “create generational wealth” for his family , including his family. son lives in Miami.

“This program and others like it undermine trust in government,” Williams concluded, referring to foreign corruption not only in Ecuador but also in Venezuela, Brazil and other Latin American countries, where millions of lives were stolen and taken to the Miami area.

Polit’s son, John Christopher Polit, a stockbroker, did not appear in court with his father. But in September, John Polit, 43, was charged with conspiring with him in a money laundering scheme that involved setting up shell companies in Florida to hold valuable assets and “hide” them for politicians and their relatives between 2010 and 2018, according to indictment. John Polit was granted a $14 million personal bond secured by his family’s assets and pleaded not guilty.

At the father’s sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutor Jill Simon said the former Ecuadorian official “directed the laundering of his bribes” and “used his son John to make the money disappear.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Polit’s defense attorneys, Howard Srebnick, Jacqueline Perczek and Jeanelle Gomez, tried to minimize the amount their client moved to Miami, arguing that the $16.5 million figure cited by prosecutors was “vastly inflated.” Describing Polit as a “loving father” who cared deeply about his family and others, they pushed for a sentence of up to six years in prison. They compared his case to the 2022 trial of former Venezuelan treasurer Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen and her husband Adrian Jose Velasquez Figueroa, who were found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison for laundering more than $100 million in bribes to Miami and Switzerland.

“The United States benefits from bringing these cases and keeps the money,” Srebnick told the judge. “The government keeps the loot and doesn’t return it to where it came from.”

But prosecutor Berger countered that in the Venezuelan case, the U.S. government cannot return the millions lost in dozens of Venezuelan corruption cases brought to Miami because it would mean returning to President Nicolas Maduro’s corrupt regime.

The first to stand trial in the Odebrecht case in the USA

In April, a 12-member federal jury in Miami unanimously found Carlos Polit guilty of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five related charges, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Polit immediately surrendered to prison authorities and is being held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

His federal sentencing guideline called for a prison sentence of 12 1/2 to 15 1/2 years, although the judge gave him 10 years, partly citing his age and health for a lesser sentence. The U.S. government plans to seize Polit’s $16.5 million estate, which includes his former Cocoplum home and an office building in Miami, as part of a forfeiture order.

The two-week corruption trial exposed not only Polit but also the giant Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, which spent several years bribing a former Ecuadorian official to get out of a $100 million government fine for a hydroelectric project.

In 2016, Odebrecht pleaded guilty to a large-scale scheme to bribe public officials in 12 countries, including Ecuador, amounting to nearly $800 million, leading to the payment of approximately $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Department of Justice. Polit’s trial followed the high-profile scandal and marked the first time that an Odebrecht-linked defendant could be prosecuted on charges of conspiracy and money laundering in the United States.

During the father’s trial in Miami, his defense attorneys tried to separate the roles of father and son by suggesting that Carlos Polit, who accepted bribes from Odebrecht contractors, had nothing to do with John Polit’s alleged laundering of corruption proceeds in Miami. However, prosecutors demonstrated, based on a number of witnesses, bank transfers, bank deposits and investments, that their roles were intertwined in a classic conspiracy.

“He used his power to make sure he got his money,” Justice Department prosecutor Alexander Kramer told jurors in closing arguments, explaining that Carlos Polit does not have to launder money himself to be found guilty. “He was as responsible as his son. When his son hid that money (in Miami)… it was Carlos Polit who broke the law.”

Laundered funds used to purchase Cocoplum house

Polit’s son, John, was named as “co-conspirator No. 1” in the original indictment against his father, who stood trial alone. John Polit’s name appeared repeatedly in bribe transfers through bank accounts in Panama and Miami.

The money flowed through brokerage firms in more than a dozen local real estate transactions – suspicious transactions that were originally exposed in a McClatchy article published in the Miami Herald.

Carlos Polit’s attorneys tried to distance their client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme, arguing that the real criminals were two former Odebrecht executives who broke plea deals in Brazil and non-prosecution agreements with the U.S. government for their testimony against Polit in the Miami trial.

He lived in an elegant apartment on the Miami River

Polit, who was released on $14 million bail after his March 2022 arrest and lived in an apartment tower on the Miami River, had enormous influence over Odebrecht when he became Ecuador’s controller in 2010. The Brazilian company was found to have committed contractual and technical breaches in 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, created to combat the illegal use of government funds, required him to sign off on public budgets that prosecutors said enabled him to demand more than $10 million in bribes from Odebrecht. In return, prosecutors say, Polit had government financial penalties lifted and allowed the engineering company to continue working in Ecuador.

The Miami case, investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, was based not only on an electronic trail of financial records, but also on Odebrecht’s witnesses and recordings.

Jose Santos, who worked as Odebrecht’s director of engineering and construction for 38 years, testified that he was asked to settle the company’s massive financial penalties with the Ecuadorian government in connection with the power plant fiasco, and then in 2010 he was forced to Polita.

Santos said Polit gave Odebrecht an ultimatum: pay the controller an initial $6 million bribe to make the penalties disappear or he never work in Ecuador again.

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

Santos said he initially delivered the money in a carry-on bag to Polit at his apartment in Quito, then arranged bank transfers and indirect payments through one of Odebrecht’s subcontractors in Ecuador.

During the trial in Miami, prosecutors said that at one point Santos asked Polit what he was doing with all the cash bribes.

Polit told Santos, “My son in Miami is making money disappear.”