João Vaccari Neto (born October 30, 1958,

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 GaW ...

) is a Brazilian banker and labor union leader. He is the Secretary of Finance and Planning of the Workers Party (PT) and was president of the cooperative known as BANCOOP (Housing Cooperative Bank of São Paulo). He is currently incarcerated in

Pinhais Pinhais is a municipality in Paraná state in Brazil. As of 2020, the population was 133,490. It was emancipated from the municipality of Piraquara in 1992 and is part of the metropolitan region of Curitiba. It is the smallest municipality in P ...

near

Curitiba Curitiba () is the capital and largest city in the state of Paraná in Brazil. The city's population was 1,948,626 , making it the eighth most populous city in Brazil and the largest in Brazil's South Region. The Curitiba Metropolitan area ...

Life

Vaccari Neto was born in São Paulo. He is most widely recognized for his involvement in Brazilian political scandals. He has been accused of participating in and even leading the

Mensalão scandal The Mensalão scandal ( pt, Escândalo do Mensalão, ) was a major parliamentary vote-buying scandal by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration that threatened to bring down his government in 2005. ''Mensalão'' is a neologism, a variant o ...

and the

BANCOOP case The BANCOOP case is the name used by the Brazilian press for the alleged use of BANCOOP (Housing Cooperative Bank of São Paulo) to benefit the slush funds of the Workers Party (PT), in 2002 and 2004. On October 28, 2010, Judge Patricia Inigo Funes ...

. He was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for his involvement in the

Petrobras Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a state-owned Brazilian multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The company's name translates to Brazilian Petrole ...

scandal called Operação Lava Jato. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Itaipu Binacional. In 2002, he was elected as an alternate senator for São Paulo on the ticket headed by Aloizio Mercadante.

Conviction and incarceration

April 15, 2015 Vaccari was arrested for receiving "irregular donations" on behalf of the PT. On June 22, 2015 Vaccari was convicted of

bribery Bribery is the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty. With regard to governmental operations, essentially, bribery is "Cor ...

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdicti ...

and criminal association, then sentenced to 15 years and four months in prison. He is incarcerated in the prison in

near

. On June 27, 2017 the 8th panel of the federal court for the 4th region upheld his appeal of this conviction. Judge

Sérgio Moro Sergio Fernando Moro (; born 1 August 1972) is a Brazilian jurist, former federal judge, college professor and politician. He was elected to be a member of the Federal Senate for Paraná in October 2022. In 2015 he gained national attention a ...

, who had found him guilty in four other cases and sentenced him to a total of more than thirty years, had cited campaign donations to the PT from construction contractors that coincided very closely to successful bids on contracts with the state-owned oil company

. Vaccari was convicted of passive corruption on May 18, 2016 and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was also charged with

in that case but was acquitted on that count. Engineers and were also implicated in the misallocation of R46,412,340, including R28 million in kickbacks. Moro found that although Vaccari did not himself receive the payment, his participation made it possible. Former minister José Dirceu and nine others were also found guilty. Dirceu was sentenced to 23 years and three months of imprisonment.

References

Brazilian trade unionists Workers' Party (Brazil) politicians 1958 births People from São Paulo Living people Brazilian politicians convicted of corruption {{Brazil-politician-stub