Police of Rio de Janeiro revealed a fraudulent scheme involving government officials. According to local media, the perennial money-laundering scheme money has enabled officials to spend a large amount of the state budget, with part of the money was converted to bitcoin.
Note, we are talking about the tools to supply prisons with food. The distortion of provisions of the budget allowed the participants of the Scam to redirect to third party accounts funds in the amount of $22.4 million.
As reported by the Brazilian media, among the suspects in the organization and conduct of fraud in especially large size was the former police chief Marcelo Martins (Marcelo Martins) and Cesar Rubens Monteiro Carvalho (Cesar Rubens Monteiro Carvalho), in the past held the post of the head of the penitentiary system of Brazil. Currently, officials are under arrest.
In addition, at the request of one of the officials, the scheme was organized by the former Governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro Sergio Cabral (Sérgio Cabral), who in 2017, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of corruption and money laundering.
Local newspaper Agência Brasil reports that the scheme for money laundering operated since 2001, long before some of its members began to invest the stolen funds in scriptactive. No the publication does not mention the amount that was converted to cryptocurrency, but the fact presented the matter in a new light.
“Considering this specific operation in the Tax office, we noticed that the first time such transactions have used bitcoin. Remittances were made with a further purchase bitcoin,” said managing Tax service in Rio de Janeiro, Luiz Henrique Casemiro (Luiz Henrique Casemiro).
Recall that in early January it became known that the Brazilian government plans to optimize the system of petitions using the Ethereum blockchain, which would be the first case of the use of the blockchain in the electoral system of the state.
