A judge at the London Magistrates’ Court in Westminster ruled on Monday to extradite former Meinl Bank CEO Peter Weinzierl to the United States. The decision is not yet final, as Weinzierl is now appealing to the Supreme Court. The former Austrian banker, charged with money laundering, faces 70 years in prison.
Weinzierl and a second general manager are accused of laundering black money with, among others, the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht from 2006 to 2016 to bribe officials with hundreds of millions of dollars through so-called reptilian funds. Weinzierl was managing director of Meinl Bank, which was later renamed Anglo Austrian AAB Bank, and filed for bankruptcy at the Commercial Court of Vienna in March 2020.
arrest in Britain
Weinzierl was arrested in Britain at the end of May 2019 at the request of the US. The prosecutor said at the time that he was also a member of the board of directors of a bank in Antigua affiliated with Meinl Bank.
Fraudulent transactions?
Prosecutors say the suspects and their accomplices used fraudulent transactions and bogus contracts to transfer more than $170 million (€159 million) from New York bank accounts through their bank to offshore accounts secretly controlled by Odebrecht.
Brazil has defrauded millions in taxes
The money allegedly flowed to government officials in Brazil, Mexico and Panama and deducted from profits by Odebrecht, defrauding the Brazilian state of more than $100 million in taxes.
In December 2016, Odebrecht and its parent company Braskem SA, Brazil’s largest petrochemical company, admitted to receiving bribes and agreed to pay US$3.5 billion to US and Brazilian regulators. Odebrecht was finally renamed Novonor SA in December 2018.
Source: Krone
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