Pandora Papers reveal more ‘offshore’ businesses of Alejandro Vinelli, who sold COVID-19 tests to the Municipality of Quito

Alejandro Vinelli Ayala is a young businessman who is prosecuted for possible embezzlement for the sale of COVID-19 tests to the Municipality of Quito. Its ability to obtain public contracts and, at the same time, do business in tax havens has been prolific. It has been documented in judicial and journalistic investigations. One such business, hidden until now, occurred at the end of 2016.

Los Pandora Papers, the leak from the Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that was shared with EL UNIVERSO, show that Alejandro Vinelli acquired Windeebay Advisors Limited, domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, while doing the paperwork to obtain the concession of three mining areas in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where there could be gold deposits.

The documents to finalize the purchase of the offshore they were ready in mid-November 2016 and were held by an executive at Trident Trust, an international provider of company services. Only the signatures of Vinelli and his brother, Sebastián, were missing.

The Trident Trust employee sent several communications indicating the urgency of these signatures, but received no response. I did not know that, at that time, Alejandro Vinelli was imprisoned in Quito for a judicial investigation that had been initiated, precisely, because of his business offshore linked to public contracts. These were revealed thanks to the Panama Papers, the ICIJ leak about the Panamanian study Mossack Fonseca, published in 2016.

So Vinelli faced four legal proceedings. In one he was declared innocent, in another the Prosecutor’s Office did not charge him and in two the judges said that the prosecutors had not sufficiently investigated the facts.

Only when he was released on bail was Vinelli able to sign the Windeebay Advisors papers. Now, Alejandro Vinelli faces a new trial for possible embezzlement, along with former capital mayor Jorge Yunda and twelve other people.

His company Salumed SA sold COVID-19 tests to the Municipality of Quito, at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. According to the accusation of the Prosecutor’s Office, these had low sensitivity and overpriced, something that Vinelli’s defense denies. He is on the run.

Vinelli acquired Windeebay Advisors while applying for the concession of the Paushiyacu 1, 2 and 3 mining areas (located in Napo and Orellana). The Pandora Papers show that the purpose of the offshore was to open an account at Biscayne Bank in Miami.

Further, Vinelli and his family had investments in Biscayne Capital, which is now under investigation in the United States for fraud and money laundering. Among the relatives is his first cousin, Paola Coba Vinelli, who worked in the International Trade Management of Petroecuador, under the command of Nilsen Arias Sandoval. She has glosses from the Comptroller that add up to $4.7 million, due to irregularities in the oil presale contracts with Petrochina, Unipec and Petrotailandia.

Former Petroecuador International Trade Manager Nilsen Arias, linked to an ‘offshore’ from the British Virgin Islands

This newspaper requested interviews with Alejandro Vinelli, Paola Coba and their lawyers, but received no response.

A yacht for the mines

Alejandro Vinelli used his Ecuadorian company Megarmi SA to petition the (now dissolved) Ministry of Mining the concessions of the Paushiyacu 1, 2 and 3 areas, which occupy a total of 4,677 hectares. Applications were made in April 2016.

In your app, Vinelli presented Megarmi’s balance sheets as of December 31, 2015, which do not coincide with those that he delivered to the Superintendence of Companies that same year. In this, the company appears with a net worth of almost $82,000; while in the one sent to the Ministry of Mining it has almost $191,000. That is, more than double.

According to this last document, Megarmi’s biggest asset was a “Yacht of the Year” valued at $185,926. Vinelli also presented the Ministry with a bank certificate for a low four-figure account, that is, between $1,000 and $3,999.

His proposal was to invest $261,000 in the three mines, only in the first year of exploration.

After reviewing the documents, a Technical Commission of the Ministry recommended giving the concessions. In the award, issued in November 2016, the then Undersecretary of Mining Contracting, Henry Troya Figueroa, indicated that the $261,000 would be invested in four years and not just one as the proposal says.

Troya spoke with EL UNIVERSO and showed that the norm, an instruction designed by the Ministry of Mining, indicates that bidders must present a four-year investment proposal, but that if they wish they can execute it in less time. “It’s not necessarily a mistake,” he said of the change from one to four years.

He also justified why the mines were awarded despite the fact that Megarmi did not show having the proposed investment amount. He argued that the same instructions indicate that the bidders must only show a solvency equal to or greater than 5% of the necessary investment. “I did not make the rule,” he said.

In any case, he added, after the award, the Mining Regulation and Control Agency (Arcom) must review that the investment is executed.

Troya also defended the fact that it has not been verified whether the balances presented by Megarmi were true or not. He argued that, in general, public officials start from the good faith of citizens; otherwise, it would be very cumbersome to have to verify each paper.

And he added: “The official from the Ministry of Mining could never determine the falsehood (…) because he would assume the functions of prosecutor and judge.” Finally, he clarified that the signature offshore Windeebay Advisors played no role in the award.

In this way, Vinelli obtained three concessions with the support of a yacht and a bank account whose balance did not reach $4,000. This newspaper consulted the Ministry of Energy, which absorbed the Ministry of Mining, about the current state of these areas, but received no response.

According to the records of the Mining Regulation and Control Agency (Arcom), the three Megarmi concessions were registered in the mining cadastre on December 6, 2016. By then, Vinelli was already in jail.

Biscayne Capital brokered the offshore

Alejandro Vinelli acquired Windeebay Advisors with the advice of Biscayne Capital, which served as an intermediary to contract the services of Trident Trust. In the Pandora Papers there is a form from a Biscayne assistant, in which it is stated that the company would serve to open an account at Biscayne Bank and that the brothers Alejandro and Sebastián Vinelli would be the final beneficiaries and directors of the company.

She requested that the shares be issued in the name of some shell company supplied by Trident Trust. When an executive from this firm asked why, one of her colleagues replied that one of the brothers had recently married and did not want the new wife to know about it.

The brothers signed their consent to be directors of Windeebay Advisors on October 19, 2016.

The procedures were delayed because Alejandro Vinelli was imprisoned on November 28. In order to obtain his release, he posted a $200,000 bond on January 18, 2017 and a few weeks later the signed documents reached the Trident Trust.

But there was a problem. The authorities of the British Virgin Islands give a period of only 21 days to process the registration of the directors, which had already expired. Therefore, the executives of Trident Trust decided to cross out the original dates of the papers and put a more recent one, February 6, 2017. The communications that reveal how this decision was made and the corrected documents are in the Pandora Papers.

Four processes, but the prosecutors did not prove their accusations

The name of Alejandro Vinelli Ayala appeared in the Panama Papers, another leak from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on tax havens published in 2016 by EL UNIVERSO.

Then it was discovered that Vinelli, his father and his brother were behind the Panamanian company Magson Portfolio Corp. This intended to collect 16.36% of a contract valued at $293 million that the public company Enfarma (already dissolved) delivered to the Panamanian Biofarma Corporation SA, for the acquisition of medicines.

It was also revealed that the Vinellis possessed another offshore: Megarmi SA, domiciled in the British Virgin Islands. This company signed a contract with another paper company to deliver 1% of a $60 million contract that the Ministry of Public Health had awarded to China Sinopharm International Corporation for the purchase of biomedical equipment.

At the time, the Vinelli assured this newspaper that these commitments had not materialized.

The Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation against Alejandro Vinelli and his father, Juan Vinelli Aguirre, in July 2016. After three months of investigation, the Police intercepted a call in which Alejandro Vinelli offered to intercede with a relative of his, who ran a public institution, to secure a contract in exchange for a commission.

For this reason, Alejandro Vinelli and one of his collaborators were arrested in November 2016, but were released in January of the following year after paying $200,000 bond each. Prosecutor Hugo Pérez Noboa only accused Alejandro Vinelli of influence peddling, but a court declared him innocent in January 2018.

Three others emerged from this process. One was due to a notebook that was found in the possession of the father, Juan Vinelli Aguirre, during the search carried out at his house. There was written down the exact amount of the contract that the MSP had awarded to China Sinopharm and, next to it, the names of several officials of that Ministry with percentages. Prosecutors assumed they were bribe payments.

In an interview to the Vidrio Vidrio portal, Alejandro Vinelli justified the notes in that notebook: “they were data that the Chinese dictated to my father; he only took note; They didn’t explain what it was about.”

The Prosecutor’s Office prosecuted the father and son for possible bribery, along with two officials from the MSP and the Chinese company. However, prosecutor Mario Salazar Peralta considered that there was not enough evidence to request that they be called to trial. They were all dismissed.

The Prosecutor’s Office opened two other inquiries against Alejandro Vinelli on suspicion of illicit enrichment. Nevertheless, Prosecutors Sandra Rosillo Abarca and Alejandro Vásconez Valdez requested that the judicial authorities file the investigations.

In both cases, the judges denied these requests, considering that the prosecutors had not investigated the facts well enough, and sent the files to the Pichincha provincial prosecutor, Alberto Santillán, in September 2019 and July 2020, respectively. (I)