Trump imposes sweeping limits on new US regulations Brazilian exbillionaire Batista surrenders to police
RIO DE JANEIRO: Fallen tycoon Eike Batista, who personified Brazil’s economic boom and once aimed to be the world’s richest man, had his head shaved and was incarcerated Monday after surrendering to face corruption charges.
Batista, who rose to become his country’s wealthiest person and number seven in the world, with a fortune of US$ 34.5 billion reported by Bloomberg in 2012, flew in from New York and walked immediately to a waiting police SUV.
The 60-year- old former oil and mining magnate is alleged to have paid a US$ 16.5 million bribe to ex-Rio de Janeiro state governor Sergio Cabral, already behind bars for allegedly taking bribes over World Cup and Olympics infrastructure projects.
As a brash, big- spending entrepreneur with a playboy lifestyle, Batista symbolised Brazil’s surge to economic power under then-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
His downfall represents a new landmark in a series of sprawling but interconnected corruption scandals enveloping much of Brazil’s elite, including Lula himself.
Globo television broadcast extensive live coverage of Batista’s return to the country.
He was sent first to the Ary Franco prison in Rio, which like many in Brazil is seriously overcrowded, before transferring to the much bigger Bangu complex.
Many corruption suspects in Brazil benefit from a law that puts people with university diplomas in better conditions.
However, Batista never graduated, meaning he should experience the gritty – sometimes dangerous – reality facing ordinary Brazilian detainees.
Police first came knocking at Batista’s luxury Rio home last week.
The cross-border police agency Interpol issued a ‘red notice’ alert when it emerged he was abroad.
Late Sunday, he told Globo television from Kennedy International Airport in New York that he had decided to fly back voluntarily.
“I am returning to respond to the judiciary, as is my duty,” he said, promising to ‘clear things up.’
A former speedboat racer who reached seventh place on Forbes magazine’s rich list in 2012 and even vowed to eventually become the world’s richest person, Batista indulged heavily in his taste for the high life.
He had a palatial Rio residence and loved showing off his US$ 500,000 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, planes and a helicopter.
But his empire, boosted by billions of dollars in loans from the Brazilian national development bank, was hit by plunging commodity prices and abruptly unravelled with the collapse of his oil company OGX in 2013. — AFP