Ex-ministro condenado por fraude é terceiro maior doador de Flávio Bolsonaro

Ângelo Calmon de Sá tem money in the game. The 91-year-old former banker and onetime minister of industry under the military dictatorship has given R$ 400 thousand to the national leadership of Flávio Bolsonaro's party, the PL, making him the third-largest individual donor to the senator's presidential campaign. Only two people have given more: a pharmaceutical CEO and a biodiesel magnate, each contributing R$ 500 thousand. The party itself has funneled R$ 42 million into Bolsonaro's bid.

What makes Calmon de Sá's position in this donor roster noteworthy is not merely the size of his check, but the weight of his past. In October 2007, a federal judge sentenced him to thirteen years and four months in prison for fraud. The conviction came more than a decade after the Central Bank intervened in the Banco Econômico, the institution Calmon de Sá had led since 1979. The judge called him the principal architect of the irregularities, the one who conceived them and benefited from them. There is no record that he ever served the sentence. His lawyers filed appeals and habeas corpus petitions year after year, citing his advanced age and claims of statute of limitations.

The Banco Econômico's collapse in 1995 was catastrophic in scale. Nine hundred thousand customers had their accounts frozen. Two hundred seventy-six branches shuttered. Nine thousand five hundred employees lost their jobs. When the Central Bank finally allowed depositors to withdraw funds, they could take only five thousand reais at a time. Calmon de Sá's own son withdrew a quarter million reais; some directors took eight hundred thousand. About twenty-five million dollars disappeared into an offshore account at Transworld Bank and Trust in the Cayman Islands.

The fraud itself was elaborate. The bank had donated two point four million dollars to candidates in the 1990 elections—a practice that was illegal. To hide it, the Econômico created shell transactions, paying fictitious companies for fake services and collecting receipts to make the money look legitimate. The Federal Police classified it as tax fraud. The Central Bank's investigation revealed that Calmon de Sá had authorized enormous loans to companies without adequate collateral, decisions that would have bankrupted the institution if not for the speculative profits the bank was making in Brazil's hyperinflationary markets. When the Real Plan stabilized prices in 1994, those profits evaporated. The bank's balance sheets, apparently doctored, showed negative equity.

Calmon de Sá's career had been built on proximity to power. He served as president of the Bank of Brazil under the military regime, then moved to the Commerce Ministry under Ernesto Geisel from 1977 to 1979, where his mandate was to boost exports of manufactured and agricultural goods as oil prices climbed. When he left that post, he took over the Econômico. A decade later, the Central Bank's Salvador office opened investigations into irregular loans to companies tied to the bank's directors. The Central Bank's inspection team recommended intervention. The recommendation was filed away.

In April 1992, President Fernando Collor appointed Calmon de Sá to the Ministry of Regional Development—a move that came just after Collor's brother had blown open a corruption scheme that would eventually force the president from office. While in the ministry, Calmon de Sá arranged a six-hundred-thousand-dollar loan from the Econômico to Collor family enterprises. He also distributed substantial sums to legislators from the North and Northeast, a maneuver the historical record suggests was designed to buy votes against impeachment. Itamar Franco, Collor's successor, removed him from the ministry in October of that year. Calmon de Sá returned to the Econômico, where he continued authorizing large loans without proper guarantees.

The Central Bank intervened in August 1995. Calmon de Sá's assets and accounts were frozen. The following year, the bank was liquidated. The BTG Pactual eventually purchased the Econômico's remains in 2022 and rebranded the institution as BESA.

Today, Calmon de Sá's donation to Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign raises a straightforward question: how does a man convicted of defrauding hundreds of thousands of people remain a major player in Brazilian electoral finance? The donation was made to the party rather than directly to the candidate—a practice, Folha has reported, designed to obscure the connection between donor and politician. Calmon de Sá did not respond to requests for comment.