Brazil

Brazil’s Department of Federal Revenue (RFB) has recently revealed it’s looking to monitor the activities of businesses dealing with cryptocurrency, a move it claims will help it prevent tax evasion […]

Nearly two out of three Latin Americans will choose a new leader over the next 12 months. Chile and Honduras have kicked off the year-long cycle. Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay and possibly Venezuela will follow next year.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged a Spanish-Swiss banker with laundering $21.7 million in graft money for Brazilian clients involved in the country’s largest corruption scandal, including jailed former lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, Reuters reported.

The former relationship manager of Zurich-based BSI bank, was arrested at Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos airport as he got off a flight from Switzerland on Nov. 27 and is being held in Curitiba, the centre of the so-called Car Wash investigation.

Brazil has seen a recent boom in fintech with startups providing digital, low-interest banking solutions. These innovative alternatives are in turn causing big banks to reevaluate their own services. In Goldman Sachs’ latest report to the New York Times, Brazil’s fintech leaders are revolutionizing the traditional banking sector.

Entitled “Fintech Brazil’s Moment,” the 45-page research report estimates that the more than 200 financial technology companies in Brazil should generate a potential revenue pool of about $24 billion over the next 10 years. Payments, lending and personal finance are three promising segments, as is insurance, the report found.

Switzerland has extended a ban on Brazilian meat to 21 processing plants from four as part of Europe-wide safety measures, Swiss authorities said on Sunday. EU veterinary experts recommended reinforced checks on imports of meat from Brazil on Friday after an investigation began there into bribery of food inspectors.

The moves are in response to a scandal that emerged last weekend, in which authorities in Brazil suspended over 30 government following allegations that some of the country’s biggest meat processors have been “selling rotten beef and poultry for years”.

ABB has won a $75m order to supply advanced converter transformers for a high voltage direct current transmission link in Brazil.
The 800kV Belo Monte connection will transmit renewable energy generated in the north of the country to the southeast, the Swiss company said.

The 2,518 kilometre (km) link will transmit clean power generated in the north of Brazil, from the Xingu substation, to the Rio Substation in the southeast. It will be capable of transporting up to 4000 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to meet the needs of around ten million people. The order was booked in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Brazil’s antitrust body has slapped five banks with fines worth a combined 183.5 million reais (US$ 54 million) for creating a cartel to manipulate exchange rates, official sources announced. CADE, an office in charge of preventing economic abuse, announced that it had hit Barclays, Citicorp, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase with the fines for participating in anti-competitive activities.

The ruling is linked to an investigation begun in Switzerland, Britain and the United States in which 15 companies have been accused of manipulating exchange rates. The fines so far handed down in this case have reached almost 6 billion U.S. dollars.

The new Brazilian government headed by Michel Temer announced a plan of economic reforms to groped to revive the economy hit by the crisis without increasing public spending.

Temer announced a privatization plan: from the sale of four airports and two harbours to a series of projects such as the construction of new buildings and roads up to the creation of new mines to be entrusted to private companies. "The State can not do everything," the president said during the presentation of the reforms.