MIAMI – A former banker from Miami pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to participating in a $16 million international bribery and money laundering scheme, prosecutors said.
John Christopher Polit, 43, was accused of laundering bribe proceeds paid to his father, Ecuador’s former Comptroller General Carlos Ramon Polit Faggioni.
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Some of those proceeds went to “various investments in South Florida,” federal prosecutors said.
“From approximately 2010 to 2015, Carlos Polit solicited and received bribe payments from Odebrecht S.A., the Brazil-based construction conglomerate, in exchange for using his official position to remove fines and not impose fines in order to benefit Odebrecht and its business in Ecuador,” prosecutors said in a news release. “Additionally, Carlos Polit received a bribe from an Ecuadorian businessman in or around 2015 in exchange for assisting the businessman and his company in connection with certain contracts from the state-owned insurance company of Ecuador.”
Authorities said John Polit helped his father launder the money by “layering transactions through Panamanian accounts of intermediary companies and using Florida companies registered in the names of certain associates” and then used the funds to “purchase and renovate real estate in South Florida and elsewhere and to purchase restaurants, a dry cleaner and other businesses.”
John Polit, following his guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, faces up to a decade behind bars. He’s set to be sentenced on Jan. 30.
Carlos Polit, 73, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in October following an April conviction.
“Odebrecht S.A. pleaded guilty in December 2016 to conspiring to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a broader scheme to pay nearly $800 million in bribes to public officials in 12 countries, including Ecuador,” prosecutors said.