Ecuadornews:
Former Legal Secretary of the Presidency, Alexis Mera Giler, denies it. But former Odebrecht superintendent for Ecuador, Jose Conceição Santos, and his boss, former vice president for Latin America, Luiz Mameri, say the company gave him bribes for $ 4.8 million. They did it in their award-winning collaboration with the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office.
The money was transferred to the company Dramiston Limited, domiciled in the Bahamas, in two open bank accounts in the Guaranty Trust Bank Limited Bahamas and the RBC Royal Bank (Bahamas) Ltd. Conceição and Mameri presented the deposits made from the screens companies that Odebrecht used for bribes.
According to Conceição, Mera’s intermediary was Carlos Pareja Cordero, who is based in Peru as a refugee, although in Ecuador there is still a pending process for Petroecuador’s bribery network. Pareja is not part of the Odebrecht case.
These revelations, which were already published by this Journal in December 2017, were never investigated by the State Attorney General’s Office, and no one has followed the money route of Dramiston Limited.
Even this week, the attorney general in charge, Ruth Palacios, claimed to not have knowledge of Mameri’s testimonies, even though these were part of the international criminal cooperation that the Prosecutor’s Office signed with Brazil. This Journal now publishes the video of Mameri’s testimony, thanks to an alliance with several Latin American media led by IDL-Reporteros, of Peru.
At the end of 2017, Mera y Pareja, who was an Odebrecht lawyer, denied their participation in these events in statements to EL UNIVERSO.
When asked why he had not filed a complaint about it, Mera said in an email: “I do not file complaints for the simple ‘coup d’état’, as certain politicians and aspiring politicians love it. If Pareja Cordero has denied that he asked for money in my name, I cannot report it just because it is claimed by a criminal like (Conceição) Santos, who may be lying. “
Both Conceição and Mameri explained to Brazilian prosecutors that a first payment was for $ 1.3 million for the return of Odebrecht to Ecuador in 2010. And subsequently another payment of $ 3.5 million was made as a kind of protection to avoid having problems with the works they were developing in the country. Even, Conceição pointed out that at the beginning Pareja asked for $ 5 million, but then they were left in the $ 3.5 million.
Mameri testified that Conceição had indicated to him that, due to the preponderant role played by Mera in the preparation of the presidential decrees for the ousting of Odebrecht in 2008, it was essential to count on his support for the return.
Despite presenting the deposits, Conceição admitted that he never met Mera, as he did with other officials mentioned in his testimonies, for example, the then comptroller Carlos Pólit or Ricardo Rivera, the uncle of then-Vice President Jorge Glas.
This newspaper requested an interview with Mera. He urged him to report on his trip to Brazil in January 2017 and the hiring of a law firm in that country to represent Ecuador in the Odebrecht case, since the Brazilian press was hired by the firm Tozzini Freire Abogados. However, there was no response. (I)
Source: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2019/02/02/nota/7168475/sobornos-odebrecht-tocan-alexis-mera
