João Vaccari Neto (born October 30, 1958,

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

) 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 near

Curitiba Curitiba () is the capital and largest city in the state of Paraná (state), Paraná in Southern Brazil. The city's population was 1,773,718 , making it the List of cities in Brazil by population, eighth most populous city in Brazil and the larg ...

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 (, ) was a major parliamentary alleged vote-buying scandal by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration that threatened to bring down his government in 2005. ''Mensalão'' is a neologism, an augmentative variant of the w ...

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 Fune ...

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

Petrobras Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by and Trade name, trading as the portmanteau Petrobras (), is a Brazilian state-owned enterprise, majority state-owned multinational corporation in the petroleum industry headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. ...

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 Aloizio Mercadante Oliva (born 13 May 1954 in Santos, São Paulo) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the Chief of Staff of Brazil between 2014 and 2015. He was a founder of the Workers' Party in February 1980 and vice-chairma ...

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 corrupt solicitation, payment, or Offer and acceptance, acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official ...

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

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

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