Germán Efromovich (born 1950 in

La Paz La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the third-most populous city in Bol ...

) is a

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

n-born entrepreneur with

multiple citizenship Multiple/dual citizenship (or multiple/dual nationality) is a legal status in which a person is concurrently regarded as a national or citizen of more than one country under the laws of those countries. Conceptually, citizenship is focused on ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian,

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...

n, and Polish. He was born into a family of Polish

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

.Paweł Rożyński: Całkiem fajny kraj
at '' Rzeczpospolita'', 2 February 2013. His net worth is estimated to be $1 billion.

Biography

His family is originally from Poland. Looking for a new home after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, his parents left Poland for

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, first to

, where he was born, and later to

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

, where Germán Efromovich was raised from 1955 in Arica and then from 1964 in

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

, Brazil. After schooling he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from FEI University in Brazil. His career includes selling encyclopedias, dubbing Mexican movies into Portuguese and the ownership of a school in São Bernardo do Campo, where in the 1980s he taught a union leader named

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (; born Luiz Inácio da Silva; 27 October 1945), known mononymously as Lula, is a Brazilian politician, trade unionist, and former metalworker who is the president-elect of Brazil. A member of the Workers' Party ...

, who later became

President of Brazil The president of Brazil ( pt, Presidente do Brasil), officially the president of the Federative Republic of Brazil ( pt, Presidente da República Federativa do Brasil) or simply the ''President of the Republic'', is the head of state and head o ...

. The oil sector laid the groundwork for what would become Synergy Group. To build his

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

and

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot a ...

empire Efromovich bought Avianca, Colombia's national airline, in 2004, for US$64m, plus the assumption of US$ 220 million in debt and leasing liabilities. Initially performing only nondestructive testing for the Brazilian-government-run oil company, Petrobras, Efromovich developed more business to the point of building and leasing

oil rig {{about, , the mnemonic OIL RIG, Redox An oil rig is any kind of apparatus constructed for oil drilling. Kinds of oil rig include: * Drilling rig, an apparatus for on-land oil drilling * Drillship, a floating apparatus for offshore oil drilling ...

s. His other businesses include

power plants A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many pow ...

, shipyards and products for the medical industry. After the sinking of one of these oil rigs in the

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

, off the Brazilian coast, legal disputes with insurance companies and with Petrobras, Germán Efromovich began investing in

. This was by pure chance, because a customer, who could not pay cash in a business deal, gave him two of his aircraft. This was the beginning of an

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) ...

company. The Efromovich brothers called it

OceanAir Oceanair was a regional airline that was based at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It competed on domestic routes with Prinair; and on routes to the Virgin Islands with Prinair and with Aero Virgin Islands; ...

and started to transport staff between the oil exploration site in

Macaé Macaé () is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, 180 km northeast of the state capital. It is the birthplace of the 13th president of Brazil, Washington Luís. Location Macaé is generally considered to be ...

and

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

. OceanAir, 2010 renamed Avianca Brazil, was launched in 1998 and six years later he purchased the

n legacy airline Avianca from

Julio Mario Santo Domingo Julio Mario Santo Domingo Pumarejo (October 16, 1923 – October 7, 2011) was a Colombian-American billionaire businessman, diplomat and patriarch of the Santo Domingo family who lived in New York City. He controlled more than 100 companies in ...

. As a result of his major investments in Colombia's economic and social development, Efromovich was officially made an honorary Colombian citizen in 2005 by the Colombian government. He has control or shares in his own Synergy Group, based in

, which in 1998 was offering maintenance services for oil operations in Brazil. In late 2004, Efromovich's company agreed to buy a controlling stake in Avianca, which at the time was under the protection of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Synergy Group subsequently acquired the remainder of Avianca in 2005. In February 2010, Avianca and TACA merged to AviancaTaca. The TACA Group encompassed TACA Airlines and their participation in Lacsa, Aviateca, Sansa Airlines, La Costeña, Aeroperlas and Isleña Airlines. Avianca includes: Avianca, Tampa Cargo and the recently incorporated AeroGal from Ecuador. The combined Avianca and Taca is now the second-largest airline in the region in terms of revenue, behind Chilean-Brazilian's

LATAM Airlines Group LATAM Airlines Group S.A. is an airline holding company headquartered in Santiago, Chile. It is considered the largest airline company in Latin America with subsidiaries in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru. The company filed for ...

. All these airlines are controlled by Synergy Aerospace Corp. based in Bogota, a subsidiarity of Synergy Group. Efromovich also has shares in Wayraperú, Avianca Ecuador and OceanAir, which was later renamed Avianca Brasil. On November 5, 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential

electronic document An electronic document is any electronic media content (other than computer programs or system files) that is intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output. Originally, any computer data were considered as something inter ...

s relating to

offshore investment Offshore investment is the keeping of money in a jurisdiction other than one's country of residence. Offshore jurisdictions are used to pay less tax in many countries by large and small-scale investors. Poorly regulated offshore domiciles have ser ...

, revealed that Efromovich and Synergy Group's subsidiary Avianca Holdings were linked to an offshore conglomerate used for the aerocommercial holding business with ramifications in Bermuda, Panama and Cyprus. Efromovich used a Panamanian offshore that hid more than 20 firms located in tax havens. On August 19, 2020, Efromovich and his brother José were arrested in

as a part of Operation Car Wash, and as a result of their involvement in a corruption scheme that involved paying bribes of about R$40 million between 2009 and 2013 to Petrobras and Transpetro high executives so as to win bids to build Panamax ships for the company in the Efremovichs' Estaleiro Ilha (Eisa) shipyard. Both arrests were preemptive and the brothers were put under house arrest in the face of the

Covid-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. Efromovich has insisted on his innocence. A Brazilian tribunal considered that the accusations are proper, and decided to start a trial on September, 2020. The arrest order on both brothers was lifted on November 11, 2020, in response to a ''

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

'' claim by their defense, although the injunction and preemptive measures are being held in place, which forbids them from leaving the country, changing their residence without informing the authorities, moving any banking account outside the country, or making any management or financial decision in the companies they are stockholders of. They also must surrender their passports, informing the judge of their current addresses and committing to attend all appointments and hearings to which they are summoned as part of the process being advanced on them. Efromovich is the president of a 2022 Italian start-up airline, Aeroitalia.

Family

Germán Efromovich is married to Hilda and they have three daughters. His life is spent shuttling between

and Bogotá. He has a brother named José Efromovich, five years younger, who was the chairman of Avianca Brazil.Interview in Portuguese with Estadão TV
5 June 2011 (pt)

References

External links

Efromovich: Hardworking Visionary
Latin Trade, 25 May 2011

Efromovich: Hardworking Visionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Efromovich, German Avianca Living people Brazilian businesspeople Colombian businesspeople Polish businesspeople Brazilian chief executives Colombian chief executives Polish chief executives 1950 births Bolivian emigrants to Brazil Bolivian Jews Brazilian Jews Colombian Jews Bolivian people of Polish-Jewish descent Brazilian people of Polish-Jewish descent Colombian people of Polish-Jewish descent Brazilian billionaires Colombian billionaires Polish billionaires Naturalized citizens of Colombia People from La Paz People named in the Paradise Papers