Alberto Youssef

Alberto Youssef (born Londrina, Brazil, 6 October 1967) is a Brazilian black-market banker. He has been implicated in several of Brazil's largest scandals during the past generation. He was a figure in the Banestado scandal, and later was a major target of Operation Car Wash, the official investigation of corruption surrounding Petrobras, the government oil company.

Bloomberg described Youssef in January 2015 as “Brazil’s black-market central banker, a career criminal who smuggled cash for the rich and powerful”. In August 2015, The New York Times called him “a convicted money launderer and former bon vivant.”

Youssef was arrested in March 2014 for violating the terms of a plea-bargaining agreement. He is currently incarcerated.

Youssef is the son of Kalim Youssef, a Lebanese immigrant, and Antoinette Youssef, a Brazilian. He grew up in very modest circumstances in Londrina, a town in the state of Paraná.

When he was a boy, he sold snacks in the streets of Londrina. During his teenage years, after earning a pilot's license, he began smuggling costly electronic items and other merchandise into Brazil from Paraguay, where taxes were far lower, and selling them on. His older sister worked with him on this smuggling operation, which first put Youssef on the government's radar, in the 1980s. Also during his teens, he helped his mother sell food at a shop at the local airport.

It was at the airport that he met José Janene, a businessman and pilot who would later become a member of Congress and helped Youssef with his career.

By the early 1990s, Youssef had left smuggling behind and gone into the business of money laundering. Soon he was considered one of the top doleiros, or black-market currency changers, in Brazil. According to Bloomberg, Youssef began driving an armored car to deliver cash amounts daily.

Youssef was arrested both in 2000, and again in 2001, because of a corrupt operation that was based in Londrina and that involved the bribery of bank employees who in return cashed municipal checks, including unsigned checks. He was never put on trial, however, and spent less than a month behind bars.

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