Brazil laundering suspect sets example for Panama

IN A MOVE that Panama would like to see followed  by some of its  corruption fugitives,  Businessman Eike Batista, who was Brazil’s richest man, arrived Monday morning in Rio de Janeiro aboard a plane from New York to face allegations of corruption.

Batista, who was met by police as he exited the plane, was immediately taken for a medical examination.

Police tried to arrest Batista last Thursday at his home in Rio de Janeiro, but the businessman was not there.

His lawyer said that he was in New York for work and that he would return to Brazil to surrender, but the Brazilian authorities asked for him to be included in Interpol’s red alert list.

“I am returning to respond to justice, as is my duty…I am surrendering,” Batista said in an interview at the boarding area of JFK Airport in New York. “I’m giving myself up. It’s time to help clean things up.”

Batista, 60, is suspected of having laundered millions of dollars in a corruption plot that also involves former Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral (2007-2014), already in prison.