Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Brazilian Court Ends Bribery Probe Aimed at Sephardic Billionaire Joseph Safra

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian federal court has closed a criminal suit that accused banker Joseph Safra of being part of a conspiracy to pay bribes to Brazilian tax officials, which the Jewish billionaire and philanthropist has always denied.

“Mr. Safra was not investigated, he was not even heard, and even so, he was denounced. The judges concluded that there was not a minimum of evidence to file a criminal suit,” Safra’s lawyer told reporters.

The decision “prevents the continuation of the action for lack of just cause,” added a Safra Group statement.

The case was interrupted for the part dealing with Safra, but should continue in relation to other defendants, reported Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo on Tuesday.

In March, Brazilian justice authorities said that Safra knew but said nothing about corruption that resulted in a probe of some of Brazil’s richest and most powerful people.

The financier, who is said by Fortune magazine to be the world’s richest banker, was accused of having known of a plan by executives at his banking group in Brazil to pay $4.2 million in bribes to help reduce tax debts amounting to nearly $500 million.

Prosecutors made clear that Safra was not suspected of having handled the bribe himself. The accusation was based on tapped phone calls between a Safra bank executive and tax officials.

Fortune and Forbes estimate Safra’s wealth at $18.6 billion, making him Brazil’s second-richest man and the 42nd-wealthiest person in the world. Safra, 77, controls a banking and financial conglomerate that operates in 19 countries.

“There have not been any improprieties by any of the businesses of the Safra Group,” the company said in a statement when the case was opened. “No representative of the group offered any inducement to any public official and the group did not receive any benefit in the judgment of the tribunal.”

Termed Operation Zealot, the investigation concerns actions of Brazilian finance ministry officials. Prosecutors looked into at least 70 industrial, engineering, agricultural and financial groups over possible bribes allegedly paid to a ministry panel on tax appeals in exchange for results favorable to them.

The leading philanthropist in Brazil’s 120,000-strong Jewish community, Joseph Safra was born in Aleppo, Syria, but raised in Lebanon. His family moved to Brazil in 1952. He founded Safra Bank in 1955.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.