Roberto Sallouti was running on his treadmill at his home in São Paulo in the early morning of Wednesday November 25, 2015, when his mobile phone buzzed, out of his reach. The then senior vice-president and board member of BTG Pactual maintained his pace. It was only when the phone continued to buzz angrily over the next minute or so that he looked at it. There were many missed calls, including quite a few from the bank’s front desk. He returned the call.
“The federal police are here, lots of agents,” he was told.
Sallouti assumed the unannounced visit was in regards to a client matter – as the leading bank for Brazil’s richest families, legal issues tended to crop up from time to time. He switched off the treadmill, hoping to be able to resolve the matter and clear the bank’s reception of police agents before the office began to get busy for the day. But before Sallouti had been able to leave for the bank’s headquarters in São Paulo’s Faria Lima district, he got a call from one of the bank’s lawyers.
