Lula’s friend shielded assets to avoid paying creditors – 09/05/2023 – Panel SA

A friend of President Lula, José Carlos Bumlai, 78, was again targeted in court. A private investigation carried out at the request of creditors revealed operations to shield the rancher’s assets and even the simulated purchase of a plane with funds from the bankrupt estate of the São Fernando mill.

The bankrupt estate’s debt is around BRL 2 billion and the public banks alone —BNDES, Banco do Brasil and Caixa Econômica Federal— have BRL 775 million in loans.

The court had authorized the law firm Duarte e Forsell, specialized in tracking assets, to search for assets owned by the Bumlai family in Brazil and abroad.

In one of the parts of the process, which is now confidential, the office claims to have been removed from that function last year. There was an appeal, but it was not accepted.

At that moment, the creditors already knew that enough Bumlai assets had been found in the country and abroad to practically pay off the debt of the bankrupt company.

At the same time, creditors discovered a deal they never made with Bumlai. Since then, they have asked the judge for access to the document, which has not yet occurred.

According to the supposed agreement, the creditors would give up the money they have to receive, paying off debts to Bumlai and his children. That settlement, creditors insist, never existed.

“If it existed, we did not participate, and it was done in an obscure way,” lawyer Otávio Barbi, a partner at Tolentino Advogados, who represents a fund with around R$ 50 million in receivables, told the column.

“We petitioned to see the agreement eight months ago and, so far, nothing. The judge has ignored us.”

In the incident filed this year in court, the creditors claim that the purpose of the alleged agreement would be to shield the Bumlai family.

In the midst of tracking Duarte and Forsell’s assets, not only assets were found, but a series of irregularities allegedly practiced by the former controllers.

The column had access to the document. Among the irregularities pointed out by the investigators was the disguised purchase of a Cessna aircraft made with money from the bankrupt estate.

Experts claim that the rent paid monthly was actually a financing installment. At the time, Bumlai’s company was already under judicial intervention and the businessman referred to these monthly payments of R$ 1.5 million as “an insignificant expense”.

The family would also have carried out asset shielding by simulating purchase and sale operations of farms and other assets. And diversion of company resources to the patriarch and children through the provision of unproven services, according to the investigation.

Target of the Lava Jato operation, José Carlos Bumlai was sentenced to 9 years and 10 months for passive corruption and fraudulent management.

In 2016, he provided an engineer and an architect to renovate the so-called “Sítio do Lula”, in Atibaia (SP), which was essential for the conviction of the former president.

Due to secrecy, lawyer Ricardo Tepedino, who defends the Bumlai, did not speak out; the trustee of the bankrupt estate, Vinícius Coutinho; and the Forsell e Duarte office. The judge of the bankrupt company, Cesar de Souza Lima, did not respond until the publication of this report.

With Diego Felix

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