Brazil - Minister of the Economy
About
Paulo Guedes is Brazil’s minister of the economy. He was appointed by President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist who took office in 2019 vowing to end corruption. Guedes, a co-founder of the investment bank BTG Pactual, was one of Bolsonaro’s top campaign advisers.
Shortly after Bolsonaro’s victory, Brazilian authorities launched an investigation to determine whether Guedes mismanaged state pension funds as an investment banker. Guedes denied wrongdoing. A federal court closed the investigation in October 2020.
Unlike many of Bolsonaro’s cabinet members, Guedes is not a former military officer. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. Guedes went on to become one of the “Chicago Boys,” a group of Friedman-trained economists who pursued a free-market approach to Chile’s economy under dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Bolsonaro has backed Guedes’ proposals for cutting taxes and reducing government debt amid political strife and corruption investigations.
Political Career
Minister of the Economy (2019–present)
In The Pandora Papers
The Pandora Papers reveal that Guedes has been one of the shareholders and directors of Dreadnoughts International Group, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 2014. Guedes set up the company with the help of Trident Trust. The leaked files list his daughter as a joint shareholder and co-director. In 2015, Guedes added his wife as a shareholder.
Dreadnoughts was active in the British Virgin Islands as of August 2021. It is unclear from company records whether Guedes still has a role in the company.
A spokesperson for Guedes’s office told ICIJ that he declared his ownership of Dreadnoughts to tax authorities and withdrew from private investment activity upon taking office in order to comply with Brazilian law.
Secrecy Jurisdictions
British Virgin Islands
Secrecy Broker
At the heart of the Pandora Papers are 14 offshore firms that help clients establish companies in secrecy jurisdictions. This profile draws on leaked data from these providers:
Discover this Power Player’s offshore connections.
The information on this profile is current as of October 3, 2021. Read more about the Pandora Papers data.