A report by The Gazette has revealed how again in 2014, TelexFree funded a Paul McCartney live performance in Espírito Santo, Brazil.
In keeping with The Gazette’s report, some 30,000 attended McCartney’s live performance. The live performance itself was a part of McCartney’s 2014 “Out There” tour.
The Brazilian leg of McCartney’s tour was being dealt with by producer Flavio Salles.
Talking to The Gazette, Salles (proper) acknowledged he “wanted an investor for the exhibits with vital funding, and (so) I seemed them up”.
“Them” being TelexFree founders Carlos Costa and Carlos Wanzeler, who on the time had been flush with investor funds.
Salles’s relationship with Telexfree house owners started in 2012 after they rented an area in Vitoria, the place the occasion supervisor was a director.
On the venue, the group threw a celebration for its associates.
It was due to this (prior) industrial interplay that Salles invited Wanzeler and Costa to spend money on exhibits.
By this stage the state of Acre had launched authorized proceedings in opposition to TelexFree, on suspicion it was a pyramid scheme.
Because of a June 2013 court docket order, TelexFree’s Brazilian financial institution accounts had been frozen.
This meant that Wanzeler and Costa couldn’t straight fund McCartney’s deliberate live performance.
As a substitute they turned to Renato Alves (proper), who on the time was one in every of TelexFree’s prime promoters.
At a gathering at Costa’s non-public residence in Vila Velha, Salles handed Costa and Wanzeler an funding contract.
He claims he doesn’t know who really fronted the cash.
One in all TelexFree’s Brazilian legal professionals, Rafael Lima, claims Alves fronted the cash however that it wasn’t cash laundering.
Regardless of Lima’s assertions, The Gazette studies R$8 million was paid to Salles in money ($1.94 million USD).
The whole value of the live performance was R$15 million however full accounting for the live performance has by no means been made public ($3.65 million USD).
In subsequent prison proceedings, prosecutors in Sao Paulo would title Alvez as one in every of TelexFree’s prime cash laundering co-conspirators.
One other participant was Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha.
Beneath instruction from Carlos Costa and Carlos Wanzeler, Rocha fashioned the shell firm Capixaba Eventos.
Regardless of proudly owning 99% of Capixaba Eventos, Flavio Salles’ 1% possession stake within the firm noticed him listed because it’s proprietor.
It was by way of Capixaba Eventos that Renato Alves funded McCartney’s Espírito Santo live performance, purportedly utilizing TelexFree investor funds.
In 2017 Cleber was caught making an attempt to launder $20 million for Carlos Wanzeler.
Cleber was sentenced to 33 months in jail in early 2018.
After securing funding from TelexFree, tickets for McCartney’s Espírito Santo went on sale.
Ticket gross sales had been effectively beneath predictions, prompting distribution of tickets at little to no value.
In keeping with The Gazette;
This distribution caught the eye of the Civil Prosecutor’s Workplace of Cariacica, which in a March 2015 report mentioned it suspected evasion and cash laundering.
The company discovered that 23,704 tickets had been offered, far beneath the 38,000 seats launched by the Hearth Division and fewer than the 33,000 predicted by the organizers.
Ticket gross sales, in accordance with the Prosecutor’s Workplace, yielded R$ 3.2 million beneath the R$ 12 million initially forecast as a complete value.
Particulars of a associated cash laundering case, launched by the organized crime Particular Motion Group (GAECO) and Espírito Santo’s Public Prosecutors, have by no means been made public.
Funnily sufficient McCartney isn’t the one singer to be paid with MLM Ponzi funds.
Simply this week we discovered that again in 2017, Ruja Ignatova paid Bebe Rexha for a efficiency at her sprawling Sozopol mansion.
Ignatova’s mansion (which was nonetheless being labored on into early 2018), the get together and Rexha’s non-public efficiency, had been all paid for out of OneCoin investor funds.