Suspect of Operation Picoas Dies buried in the Dominican Republic

Altice USA’s former director of operations and the company’s strong man in the Dominican Republic, Hakim Boubazine, suspected of being one of Operation Picoas’ leading defendants, died in April this year, following the collapse of the Jet Set club in Santo Domingo, which made more than 200 mortal victims, an accident that was the time in the world. The manager – who had moved from New York to that country after the scandal was public internationally – watched with his wife to a show of Rubby Pérez, a dominated singer and a reference of the merengue when the collapse took place, whose reasons are still unknown since the investigation of the Dominican authorities is not completed.

Hakim Boubazine will have been fundamental in one of the criminal strands of the Armando Pereira scheme – co -founder of the largest French operator, holding the former PT – and his right -hand man Hernani Vaz Antunes who, according to the Public Prosecution Service (MP), will have been the brain of a financial circuit that will have injured the state by about 200 million euros.

The pair scheme to delay Altice’s heritage will have aimed at all the panoply of goods and services to which a telecommunications operator has to appeal – such as those provided by mobile phone manufacturers, telephone centers, antennas or fiber cables. To achieve their goals, Antunes approached suppliers with offers of counterparts to have a percentage of their profits (which configures a crime of private corruption in the MP’s thesis). If the contact ran badly, they had their own business.

The thesis of the MP is that, being Armando Pereira ahead of the group’s purchases, could divert the business from certain suppliers to the vendum companies that Antunes was creating in cascade. The financial circuit of the capital thus obtained ended in Dubai: here, it was divided between both equal parts, always using offshore accounts.

The addictions of hiring procedures would not be possible without the corruption of managers instead of top. According to the MP, this was the case of Hakim Boubazine, who was ahead of the group’s branch in the US, having been decisive, for example, in selling Hernani of Excell Communications Inc, a participated altice that became the fifth largest US long -distance operator.

Thus, according to the MP, Antunes got a revenue of about 1.5 billion euros, in which he will correspond to real business volume and the other to prolonged services and commissions are still to determine the totality of Altice’s heritage deletion at the international level. It is recalled that the French authorities, after the arrest of Armando Pereira, right arm of Patrick Drahi, owner of the operator, also opened an inquiry by corruption.

Boubazine was in Portugal when, in June 2023, prosecutor Rosario Teixeira and the inspector of the Paulo Silva Tax Authority, triggered the search for Operation Picoas, having fled the country along with Yossi Benchtrit, the son -in -law of Armando Pereira, who also worked for the American branch, thanks to an information escape. The MP could not, therefore, constitute them defendants. Now, with the death of Boubazine, the criminal proceedings against Altice’s top manager is extinguished.

Two years after the search, and having not yet been accused, the coercion measures imposed on the defendants have already expired. Recently, the defense of Armando Pereira requested the procedural acceleration of the case, which was accepted by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), which gave Dciap six months to accuse or file the inquiry. The deadline ended in May and Rosario Teixeira, holder of the inquiry, asked the PGR to revoke it to complete due diligence. According to the sunrise, only two of the seven rogatory cards sent, namely to Switzerland and Luxembourg, obtained response.

In the process, in Portugal, the decisive addict of the Altice Group is based on hiring ‘, with harmful practices of the companies of that group and the competition that indicates there is’ private corruption in the active and passive form and crimes of tax fraud and bleaching.’