Minister Paulo Guedes and president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, own offshore
THE TWO MEMBERS OF THE BOLSONARO GOVERNMENT MAINTAIN ACCOUNTS ABROAD DESPITE THE IMPORTANCE OF THEIR POSITIONS, WHICH CAN CONFIGURE
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
Guedes, 72, appears as a shareholder in the company Dreadnoughts International Group, registered in the British Virgin Islands. This is a shelf company , as they are known in financial jargon: companies founded in tax havens, but which can remain inactive for years waiting for someone to give them a function. The documents show that the minister had, in 2014, at least eight million dollars (43.3 million reais, at current exchange rates) invested in the company, registered in his name and those of his wife, Maria Cristina Bolívar Drumond Guedes, and daughter, Paula Drummond Guedes. That number rose to 9.5 million the following year, according to documents obtained by the investigation, led by Piauí magazine .
Who intermediated the purchase of the offshore was the Trident Trust, a service provider that maintains branches in several tax havens and offers discrete solutions for people or organizations that wish to keep their activities hidden, according to sources in the financial market.
In Brazil, it is customary for partners and top executives of banks and financial institutions to receive bonuses and dividends in tax havens, places that enjoy privileges – such as reduced taxes or even exemption – and no transparency. Guedes was a partner at Banco Pactual between 1983 and 2006. From that date, he held stakes in several investment companies, until he took over as minister in 2019.
The president of the Central Bank, in turn, owns four companies. Two of them, Cor Assets and ROCN Limited, are registered in Panama in partnership with his wife, lawyer Adriana Buccolo de Oliveira Campos. The stated objective of the companies is to invest in the financial assets of Santander Private Bank, whose executive board Campos Neto was a member of in the past . The other offshore companies are Peacock Asset Ltd, managed by the Goldman Sachs bank , which was discovered in the 2016 Bahamas Leaks investigation . The fourth company is the Darling Group, which, according to the Central Bank, is an “asset management company properties".
The possible controversy does not lie so much in owning a company abroad, something that is not illegal – as long as it is declared to the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service –, but in the conflict of interests. Guedes, as well as Campos Neto, have already participated in decision-making that, in some way, influenced their own investments outside Brazil.
The Minister of Economy was responsible for sending to Congress a tax reform project that, in its current version (the text left the House for the Senate), benefits those who keep money in tax havens. And Campos Neto signed a resolution that exempts taxpayers from declaring to the Central Bank their assets abroad in amounts below one million dollars. This left almost 40,000 people off the bank's statistics. In a note, the BC says that people and companies with business abroad are still obliged to declare their accounts to the Revenue, but the measure starts to hide from society a data that was previously public.
Currently, a select group of 20,554 people have 204.2 billion dollars (just over one trillion reais) in accounts declared abroad, according to the Central Bank. But experts estimate that the figure in illegal money is much higher and would be around a trillion dollars.
Guedes and Campos Neto's lack of transparency with public opinion also clashes with the Code of Conduct of the High Federal Administration, which prohibits "investment in assets whose value or quotation may be affected by a governmental decision or policy", which they themselves would have taken. The prohibition refers to those about which “the public authority has privileged information, due to the position or function.”
Guedes claims he has declared his companies offshore . In the same vein, the Ministry of Economy, which he directs, reported that the private performance prior to his inauguration in 2019 “was duly declared to the Federal Revenue and other competent bodies, which includes his shareholding in the company Dreadnoughts International Group”. “His performance always respected the applicable legislation and was guided by ethics and responsibility”, he said in a note sent to Piauí magazine.. The ministry also informs that, since taking office, Guedes has disassociated himself from all his activities in the private market, as required by the Public Ethics Commission. “It should be noted that the Federal Supreme Court itself has already attested to the suitability and capacity of Paulo Guedes [to] exercise the position, in the judgment of the action proposed by the PDT against the Minister of Economy”, added the text.
The president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, also guarantees that he declared all his money abroad to the Ethics Commission of the Presidency of the Republic, as well as to the Federal Revenue Service and the Central Bank itself. In a note, the Central Bank's advisory reports that it has built its "assets with the revenues obtained in 22 years of operation in the financial market" and that since assuming the presidency of the Central Bank "there has been no remittance of resources to companies". He still remembers that he reported his entire fiscal situation when he presented himself to the Senate to assume the presidency of the Central Bank.
Campos Neto opened his first company abroad, Cor Assets, a corporation, on April 6, 2004, through the Mossack Fonseca office. In April 2018, after the Panama Papers scandal , he transferred the offshore company to another manager, the Overseas Management Company (OMC). At that time, he had a capital of one million dollars.
The company ROCN Limited, in turn, dates back to January 8, 2007, the date on which Trident Trust opened it. It was listed as inactive in November 2016, meaning that it maintained its legal status but could not operate with its assets. In his note, Campos Neto claims to declare all of this equity, pay “all due taxation” and comply with “all legal rules and ethical commands applicable to public agents”.
The dilemma of offshore companies
The problem with offshore companies is that, despite being legal, they end up emptying the national tax collection, since many taxpayers with high incomes use them to avoid taxes. So much so that offshore companies , in their advertisements, offer their potential customers to “avoid paying taxes”. To this end, they act as an intermediary structure between the client's investments and the income he will receive, whether through share dividends or property rentals, for example. These profits are not deposited in the company owner's account, but in the offshore account , and therefore remain outside the Brazilian tax authorities.
Tax lawyer Márcio Calvet Neves explains that, since the mid-1990s, an income tax of up to 34% has been paid in Brazil on the profits of companies abroad when the partner or shareholder is a legal entity. If the company's owner is an individual, the rate only reaches 27.5%, provided that this profit ends up in Brazil. But here, he explains, there is a legal gap, as it is the individual who decides whether or not to communicate this income to the Revenue. In other words, money can stay in a company abroad for years without the owner paying any tax on it. “Brazil has a very complete legislation to tax the benefits of companies abroad. But this is not the case with natural persons.
In this way, the richest keep their money safely abroad. They can even use it abroad, even if the resource has been earned in activities or businesses in Brazil . If it weren't for Pandora's Papers, it would not be possible to know that the Minister of Economy and the president of the Central Bank own companies in tax havens. The Brazilian tax agency considers tax havens to be jurisdictions with a tax rate lower than 20%, or whose legislation protects the secrecy of the corporate structure of companies. More than 60 countries and territories make up this list, including Panama, Hong Kong, the Virgin Islands and Cyprus.
the tax reform
In the case of Guedes, there is a great deal of controversy: the tax reform that he leads does not solve the problem of income of individuals deposited in offshore companies and funds in tax havens.
The initial reform project, prepared by the Federal Revenue and presented by the Ministry of Economy to Congress, intended to end the distinction between individuals and legal entities. The text envisaged taxing both “profits arising from holdings in branches resident or domiciled abroad”, even if the money did not come to be brought to Brazil. And it closed the doors to tax evasion by creating automatic taxation of corporate profits in tax havens that were owned by Brazilian individuals. It is a measure that the OECD recommends and that has already been adopted by several countries, such as the United States, Japan, China, Argentina and Mexico.
But the Chamber of Deputies excluded the paragraph that eliminated this differentiation, in a decision also negotiated with Paulo Guedes. Instead of improving the collection instrument, the approved text brings a new measure, which determines that individuals residing in Brazil can choose to collect, with a rate of only 6%, all profits, income and assets of lawful origin that are abroad. “In other words, we went from mandatory taxation of 27.5% to an optional 6% during the lobbying and amendment process”, says Calvet. And he adds that, although the text requires a “lawful origin” for the money, “there is a high risk that many people will take the opportunity to launder what also has an illicit origin, paying very little tax”.
In Brazil, the magazine Piauí , Agência Pública , Metrópoles and Poder360 publish other reports with new characters from this international investigation. In the Brazilian calculation, the following participated: Anna Beatriz Anjos, Alice Maciel, Yolanda Pires, Raphaela Ribeiro, Ethel Rudnitzki and Natalia Viana ( Agência Pública ); Guilherme Amado and Lucas Marchesini (Metrópoles ); José Roberto Toledo, Ana Clara Costa, Fernanda da Escóssia and Allan de Abreu ( Piauí ) and Fernando Rodrigues, Mario Cesar Carvalho, Guilherme Waltenberg, Tiago Mali, Nicolas Iory, Marcelo Damato and Brunno Kono ( Poder360 ), Marina Rossi, Regiane Oliveira ( EL PAÍS).
Sign up here to receive the daily newsletter from EL PAÍS Brasil: reports, analyses, exclusive interviews and the main information of the day in your email, from Monday to Friday. Also sign up for our weekly newsletter on Saturdays with highlights from the week's coverage.
source google images
editorial source https://brasil.elpais.com/pandora-papers/2021-10-03/ Ministro-paulo-guedes-e-presidente-do-banco-central-roberto-campos-neto-sao-donos-de- offshore.html?ssm=TW_CC
Comentários
Postar um comentário