The question reached Brasília the same morning the third phase of Operation Carbono Oculto was launched in São Paulo. Asked on Thursday (Sept. 24) about funds sent abroad by the Grupo Entre to finance "Dark Horse", a feature about former president Jair Bolsonaro's election, Finance Minister Dario Durigan said the money may have originated in money laundering.
"Everything indicates that the money giving liquidity to these operations comes from the same entity, from the same pocket," the minister replied when asked whether the funds wired abroad for the film could be laundered money, according to Folha de S.Paulo. On what left the fund behind the transfers, he went further:
"It is very complicated to identify what each thing is. It is a job for investigation to identify what left this fund, whether for the plea deals being made here in Brasília, the inquiries at the Supreme Court or the investigations in São Paulo... but everything indicates yes."
The operation
The statement came hours after Gaeco, the anti-organized crime unit of the São Paulo state prosecutors' office, and the Receita Federal, Brazil's federal tax authority, launched the new phase of Carbono Oculto with police support. Among the targets is Entre Investimentos, owned by businessman Antônio Carlos Freixo Júnior, known as Mineiro, who has ties to Daniel Vorcaro, the former owner of Banco Master jailed over the frauds investigated at the bank. Durigan said this phase traced R$ 11 billion moving through "the various layers of the laundromat that became part of our financial system." The case examines the use of fintechs to hide the purchase of a fuel distributor and the control of a sugar and ethanol mill, including some R$ 370 million tied to the mill.
"Entre is an asset manager that also worked as an instrument of concealment and money laundering," Durigan said, quoted by the state news agency Agência Brasil. In his assessment, the firm receives organized crime money and helped hide assets so the mill and the distributor could compete "quite unfairly with the formal sector". The tax service accuses the group of laundering organized crime money, Folha reports.
From the US fund to the film
This is where the film enters the inquiry. According to the federal police investigation as reported by Folha, Entre worked as Vorcaro's operational arm, and the money transferred to finance "Dark Horse" ended up in the Havengate Development Fund, a fund based in the United States and administered by Paulo Calixto, a lawyer tied to former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the ex-president's sons. The money was meant for the production, but authorities suspect part of it may have gone to Eduardo.
Freixo signed a plea agreement with Brazil's prosecutor general's office, the PGR, in September. Under the deal, he said he was among those responsible for wiring money and obtaining cash for Vorcaro, deliveries that he said often happened in suitcases because of the volume. Grupo Entre denied in March having any ties to Vorcaro or Master, and on the 27th of that month the Central Bank placed Entrepay, the group's payments arm, under extrajudicial liquidation.
The film that tells the story of Bolsonaro's election picked up a parallel plot on Thursday: the origin of the money that paid for it. While investigators try to trace what left the American fund across plea deals, Supreme Court inquiries and São Paulo cases, the minister's answer hangs over the production. "Everything indicates yes."