by Marcela Ayres
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Economy Minister Paulo Guedes will spend this week in the United States, traveling this Monday to Washington, where he will participate in the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as meetings of government ministers. G20 finance and central bank presidents.
According to the press office of the Ministry of Economy, Guedes’ commitments will last until Thursday, with his return scheduled for Friday.
With this, the minister should not appear in the plenary of the Chamber of Deputies this Wednesday, the 13th, to provide clarification on an offshore account in a tax haven, contrary to the indication given by the leader of the government in the House, Deputy Ricardo Barros (PP-PR ), that this would happen.
Guedes’ summoning requirement was approved with broad support, including from grassroots parties allied with President Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
On Friday, Guedes defended that all his investments were properly declared before he assumed a position in the government and that they are legal. The minister also said that a lot of noise was being made around the case, and that he saw the political motivation for this with the approach of the presidential elections.
In an article that is part of the Pandora Papers project, by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Piauí magazine reported that Guedes has an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, opened in 2014 with the amount of 9.55 million dollars.
Possession of a company abroad is not illegal as long as it is declared to the Federal Revenue Service or the Central Bank – which the minister had already said he had done, via his press office and later through his lawyers.
But the episode raised questions about conflicts of interest, as the Code of Conduct of the High Federal Administration prohibits authorities from investing “in assets whose value or price may be affected by a government decision or policy” due to the position held and the fact of possessing privileged information.
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