Tres’s report led to a federal investigation focused in Foz do Iguacu in southern Brazil, strategically situated right at the Tri-Border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, where local banks were laundering vast amounts of funds through their CC5 accounts. Eventually the total for the whole life of the racket (1991-2002) ballooned to a whopping $219 billion – placing Banestado as one of the largest money laundering schemes in history. Federal prosecutor Celso Tres was stunned to find that from 1991 to 1996 Brazilian currency worth no less than US$124 billion had been wired overseas.

The original Banestado investigation started in 1997. Then everything changed in the 1990s – with the emergence of a massive, complex criminal racket centered on money laundering. For many years the cash flow in these accounts was not significant. Way back in 1969, the Brazilian Central Bank created what was described as a “CC5 account” to facilitate foreign companies and executives to legally wire assets overseas. The CC5 lists are here, here , and here . Previously, in another podcast, Maya and anthropologist Piero Leirner, Brazil’s foremost analyst of hybrid war, briefed me on the myriad political intricacies of the leaks while we discussed geopolitics in the Global South. The small website Duplo Expresso, led by young, daring, Bern-based international lawyer Romulus Maya, first published the list.Īn epic five-hour podcast assembled the three key protagonists who denounced the scandal in the first place, back in the late 1990s, and now are able to re-analyze it: then-governor of Parana state Roberto Requiao, federal prosecutor Celso Tres and now retired police superintendent Jose Castilho Neto. Credit for the scoop on this George Orwell-does-hybrid-war plotline is due, once again, to independent media.

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