Business | Three is a cloud

Alleged fraud at a Brazilian retailer sparks a corporate reckoning

The scandal puts three low-key billionaires in the spotlight

2MAPACN Franca, Sao Paulo, Brazil. 19th Jan, 2023. The facade of an Americanas store closed after business hours in Franca. The company's bankruptcy filing was accepted after declaring debts of R$ 43 billion (BRL) from a total of around 16,300 creditors. (Credit Image: © Igor Do Vale/ZUMA Press Wire) EDITORIAL USAGE ONLY! Not for Commercial USAGE! Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Live News
Image: Alamy
|São Paulo

Brazilian businesspeople are not easily shocked. In the past decade they have seen two business empires collapse in ignominy. Eike Batista, for a time Brazil’s richest man, lost his ports-to-mines group amid charges of bribery and market manipulation (for which he was briefly jailed). Marcelo Odebrecht, the scion of a construction dynasty, went to prison over the “Big Oily” graft scheme centred on Petrobras, the state oil giant.

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