A former Ecuadorian official convicted of laundering millions of dollars in bribes from Odebrecht engineering contractors into the Miami area — including buying a luxury home in the exclusive Cocoplum neighborhood — was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Ecuador’s ex-comptroller Carlos Ramon Polit, 73, was found guilty by a Miami federal jury in April of conspiring with his son and others to make the bribery proceeds “disappear” by laundering the money through investments in local real estate, restaurants, a dry cleaner and other businesses.

In reaching her decision on Polit’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found that he “used his position to enhance the money laundering” scheme. Williams zeroed in on Polit’s criminal motivation, citing federal prosecutor Michael Berger’s assertion that he abused the trust of the Ecuadorian people by laundering $16.5 million in bribery payments so he could “massively enrich himself” and “create generational wealth” for his family, including his son living in Miami.

“This scheme and others like it erode confidence in government,” Williams concluded, referring to foreign corruption not only in Ecuador but also Venezuela, Brazil and other Latin American countries, where millions are stolen and moved to the Miami area.

Polit’s son, John Christopher Polit, a securities broker, did not face trial with the father. But in September, John Polit, 43, was charged with conspiring with him in the money laundering scheme by creating shell companies in Florida to hold valuable assets and “conceal” them for the benefit of the Polits and their relatives between 2010 and 2018, according to an indictment. John Polit was granted a $14 million personal surety bond secured with his family’s assets and pleaded not guilty.

At the father’s sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutor Jill Simon said the former Ecuadorian official “was directing the laundering of his bribes” and “he used his son John to make the money disappear.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Polit’s defense attorneys, Howard Srebnick, Jacqueline Perczek and Jeanelle Gomez, tried to minimize the amount of money that their client moved to Miami, saying the prosecution’s figure of $16.5 million was “highly inflated.” While describing Polit as a “doting father” who cared deeply for his family and others, they pushed for a sentence as low as six years. They compared his case to the 2022 trial of a former Venezuelan treasurer, Claudia Patricia Diaz Guillen, and her husband, Adrian Jose Velasquez Figueroa, who were convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for laundering more than $100 million in bribery payments to Miami and Switzerland.

“The United States profits by bringing these cases and keeps the money,” Srebnick told the judge. “The government keeps the loot and doesn’t give it back to where it came from.”

However, Berger, the prosecutor, countered that in the case of Venezuela, the U.S. government cannot return the millions forfeited in the dozens of Venezuelan corruption cases brought in Miami because it would be going back to the corrupt regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

First to stand trial in Odebrecht case in U.S.

In April, a 12-person Miami federal jury unanimously found Carlos Polit guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering and five related counts, carrying up to 20 years in prison. Polit immediately surrendered to prison authorities and has been held at the Miami Federal Detention Center.

His federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison time between 12-1/2 and 15-1/2 years, though the judge gave him 10 years, citing in part his age and health for the lower sentence. The U.S. government plans to seize $16.5 million of Polit’s assets as part of a forfeiture order, which includes his former Cocoplum home and an office building in Miami.

The two-week corruption trial not only showcased Polit, but the giant Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, which bribed the former Ecuadorian official over several years to make $100 million in government fines on a hydroelectric power plant project vanish.

In 2016, Odebrecht admitted to a massive scheme of paying nearly $800 million in bribes to public officials in 12 countries, including Ecuador, leading to its payment of about $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department. Polit’s trial was a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, offering for the first time the prosecution of an Odebrecht-linked defendant on conspiracy and money laundering charges in the United States.

At the father’s trial in Miami, his defense attorneys tried to compartmentalize the roles of the father and son, suggesting that Carlos Polit, who accepted the bribes from the Odebrecht contractors, had nothing do with the corruption proceeds being allegedly laundered by John Polit in Miami. But prosecutors showed through a series of witnesses, wire transfers, bank deposits and investments that their roles were intertwined in a classic conspiracy.

“He used his power to ensure he got his money,” Justice Department prosecutor Alexander Kramer told the jurors in closing arguments, explaining that Carlos Polit didn’t have to launder the money himself to be found guilty. “He was just as responsible as his son. When his son was hiding that money [in Miami] ... that was Carlos Polit breaking the law.”

Laundered funds used to buy Cocoplum home

Polit’s son, John, was listed as “co-conspirator 1” in the original indictment charging the father, who stood trial alone. John Polit’s name came up repeatedly in the bribery payment transfers through Panamanian and Miami banking accounts.

The money moved through intermediary companies into nearly a dozen local real estate deals — suspicious transactions that were originally exposed in a McClatchy story published in the Miami Herald.

Carlos Polit’s defense attorneys tried to distance their client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme, saying the real criminals were the two former Odebrecht executives who cut plea deals in Brazil and non-prosecution agreements with the U.S. government for their testimony against Polit at the Miami trial.

Lived in swanky Miami River condo

Polit, who after his arrest in March 2022 was released on a $14 million bond and lived in a condo high-rise along the Miami River, wielded tremendous sway over Odebrecht when he became Ecuador’s comptroller in 2010. The Brazilian firm was found to have committed contractual and technical violations on a $320 million power-plant project built near an active volcano in central Ecuador called Minas de San Francisco, according to prosecutors.

Polit’s position, which was created to combat the fraudulent use of government funds, required him to sign off on public budgets that prosecutors say enabled him to demand more than $10 million in bribery payments from Odebrecht. In exchange, prosecutors contend, Polit made the government fines go away and allowed the engineering firm to continue working in Ecuador.

The Miami case, probed by Homeland Security Investigations, was built not only upon an electronic trail of financial records but also Odebrecht witnesses and recordings.

Jose Santos, who worked as an engineering and construction executive at Odebrecht for 38 years, testified that he was asked to resolve the company’s huge fines with the Ecuadorian government over the power-plant fiasco and then found himself being extorted by Polit in 2010.

Santos said Polit offered Odebrecht an ultimatum: Pay the comptroller an initial $6 million bribe to make the fines disappear or never work in Ecuador again.

Asked by a prosecutor if he paid Polit a series of cash bribes, Santos testified: “Yes, I did.”

At first, Santos said he delivered the cash in a carry-on bag to Polit at his apartment in Quito, and then he arranged for wire transfers and indirect payments by one of Odebrecht’s subcontractors in Ecuador.

During the Miami trial, prosecutors said that at one point Santos asked Polit what he was doing with all the bribery cash payments.

Polit told Santos: “My son in Miami makes the money disappear.”

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