GE’s Latin American CEO, 21 others, arrested in Brazil fraud

Obrador sets $7.5b for youths, elderly

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 5, (Agencies): Brazilian police arrested General Electric’s Latin America CEO Daurio Speranzini Junior as part of a probe into suspected fraud and corruption by multinational companies in the Rio de Janeiro state health system.

Speranzini, the former head of Philips Medical Systems in Brazil, was among 22 people arrested, including Frederik Knudsen, an executive at the Dutch company.

Police raided 44 sites, including the Brazilian headquarters of Philips and Johnson & Johnson, but not the offices of GE, the Rio prosecutors’ office said in a statement.

Code-named “Operation Resonance,” the probe was launched with the goal of dismantling a “suppliers’ cartel” accused of committing fraud to secure public health service contracts in Rio between 1996 and 2017.

The cartel, made up of at least 33 companies and led by Brazilian medical instrument distributors Oscar Iskin, was nicknamed the “international auctions club.”

“Top executives from multinational medical equipment manufacturers arranged among themselves who would win contracts by paying a 13 percent commission on those contracts to Iskin,” said the public prosecutor.

Iskin executives would then “serve as a link between public health authorities and the cartel’s companies” to steer contracts away from “competitors who weren’t part of the cartel.”

$7.5b for youths, elderly:

Junior

President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised $7.5 billion for youth job training and aid to the elderly, keystone programs that could make Mexico’s business sector one of the biggest beneficiaries of his first year in office.

Lopez Obrador pledged the government would pay the salaries of apprentices employed by Mexican companies as part of a $5 billion package of scholarships and job training.

The once-fiery leftist met with Mexican businessmen on Wednesday in a surprisingly chummy encounter where he sealed the jobtraining deal in a handshake with business chamber leader Juan Pablo Castanon.

The programs for the elderly and youths will be the cornerstones of Lopez Obrador’s first year in office, which starts when he takes office Dec. 1.

“We will have to come up with this funding ... even if we are left without a shirt on our backs,” Lopez Obrador vowed. The president-elect — whose victory must still be certified by electoral authorities and the courts — implied that most of his other campaign promises will be left to later years in office. Lopez Obrador was elected in a landslide Sunday.

Odebrecht probe hits hurdle:

A far-reaching investigation into bribes paid by Odebrecht in Peru has hit a rough patch as the Brazilian builder is pressing local prosecutors to close a plea deal that would give it broader legal guarantees, two sources in Peru’s attorney general’s office said on Wednesday.

Odebrecht has raised its complaints about the probe in Peru to authorities in Brazil, prompting the office of Brazil’s prosecutor general to suspend its judicial cooperation with the Andean country, the office of Brazil’s prosecutor general said.

In late 2016, Odebrecht admitted publicly to having orchestrated kickback schemes in a dozen countries and has signed plea deals in Brazil, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala.

Be on guard — Maduro:

President Nicolas Maduro urged his armed forces to be on guard following news reports in the United States that a year ago President Donald Trump raised the possibility of invading Venezuela.

“You cannot lower you guard for even a second, because we will defend the greatest right our homeland has had in all of its history,” Maduro said at a military ceremony, “which is to live in peace.”

He alluded to reports in the US press which said that last August Trump asked foreign policy advisers about the possibility of invading Venezuela, which the Trump administration has derided as a corrupt, leftwing dictatorship.