The Public Ministry (MP) is convinced that football director Bruno Macedo has engaged in a fraudulent scheme, with the aim of benefiting Benfica president, Luis Felipe Vieira, at the expense of Lisbon club and the Portuguese state.
According to part of the indictment that Lusa had access to, Bruno Macedo was described as the character of Luis Felipe Vieira, who has been detained in the scope of a business and finance investigation likely to constitute “crimes of breach of trust, conditional fraud, forgery, tax fraud and money laundering.” “It also turns out that in 2015 and 2016, SL Benfica SAD made direct payments to Master International FZE in the total amount of €26,36362.62 and these gains, after the agreement between Luis Felipe Vieira and Bruno Macedo, were mobilized to, at least in part, benefit the companies Set Luis Felipe Vieira ”, says the deputy.
In order to “hide the origin of the funds in the accounts of the masters”, the order notes, the suspects agreed to use another institutional structure, which was formed in Tunisia, “by forging the existence of invoices issued by him to the master, in order to justify the circulation of funds.”
The MP’s investigation also found that Master International FZE, who was used by Bruno Macedo to receive the gains obtained through the mediation of footballers, is working to “stop the surplus value” generated by the transfer of Paraguay Derles Gonzalez and Claudio Correa.
“which is estimated at €1,280,000, an amount that should have reflected as a gain in the SL Benfica SAD accounts, and in the ultimate beneficiary as income in the IRS, which did not,” the dispatch confirms.
The representative also refers to Trade In, which was used to retain the economic rights of Brazilian footballer Cesar Martins, “and in a short period of time sold part of these rights to SL Benfica SAD for a much higher value, which resulted in an increase in costs in Portugal. to reduce taxes “on the ‘incarnated’ SAD” by more than 1.3 million euros.
Bruno Macedo and Luis Felipe Vieira are two of the four people detained on Wednesday on suspicion of involvement in “business and financing of more than 100 million euros in total, which may have caused serious damage to the state and some companies”.
The subject of the dispute is “incidents that occurred, principally, from 2014 to the present” and are likely to constitute “crimes of breach of trust, restrictive fraud, forgery, tax fraud and money laundering.”
For this investigation, approximately 45 search warrants were executed for companies, residences, law firms and banking institutions in Lisbon, Torres Vedras and Braga. Among the places where the searches took place is Benfica’s special security officer, who said in a statement that she was not constituted as suspects.
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