The Brazilian billionaire who owns London’s iconic Gerkin skyscraper has been charged with corruption.
Joseph Safra, 77, was charged on Thursday with corruption in relation to a conspiracy to pay 15.3 million reais (€3.77 million) in bribes to Brazilian tax officials, Brazilian prosecutors said.
Forbes magazine has reported that Safra is the world’s richest banker with an estimated €16 billion fortune. He is Brazil’s second-richest person after Jorge Paulo Lemann. He purchased the Gerkin in 2014 for a reported £726 million.
The accusation is over the alleged scheme in 2014 which aimed to reduce the corporation tax for Banco Safra, the 10th largest bank in Brazil. Safra and his family control the bank as part of an international conglomerate operating in 19 countries.
The Brazilian authorities said Safra was not directly involved with the alleged corruption scheme, but that evidence exists that an employee was acting on his instructions when he arranged the alleged deal.
The authorities said they had wire taps of conversations between a Safra executive, João Inácio Puga, and tax officials.
A spokesperson for the Safra Group said: “The allegations being promoted by a Brazilian prosecutor are unfounded. There have not been any improprieties by any of the businesses of The Safra Group. No representative of the group offered any inducement to any public official and the group did not receive any benefit in the judgement of the tribunal.”
Safra was born into a Lebanese family with banking connections dating back to the Ottoman Empire. The family moved to São Paulo in 1952 and the bank was founded shortly thereafter in 1955.
