An Austrian banker accused of corruption arrived in the US to face federal charges that he conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the American financial system, after fighting his extradition from the UK for four years. 

Peter Weinzierl, former chief executive officer of Anglo Austrian AAB Bank AG, is now in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, and is expected to appear in federal court in Brooklyn today. He has denied the charges.

Weinzierl was indicted in 2020 for allegedly conspiring with Odebrecht SA — Latin America’s biggest construction company, now named Novonor — in a decade-long scheme to pay bribes to win business around the world. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn claim that in one four-year period, he helped Odebrecht move more than $170 million from New York through the bank to offshore shell accounts. The bank, better known by its old name of Meinl Bank, wasn’t charged.

Odebrecht wasn’t named as a defendant in Weinzierl’s indictment, but the US said in a 2020 court filing that his case was directly connected to a scandal around the Brazilian company. Odebrecht admitted in 2016 that it engaged in a massive graft and bid-rigging plot dating back at least to 2001 and involving a hidden unit dubbed the “Department of Bribery.” Weinzierl was charged with four counts, including one count of conspiracy and two of money laundering. 

His US lawyers, Claiborne Porter and Michael B. Nadler, didn’t return voicemails and emails seeking comment on the case.

Weinzierl, 59, had argued that his 2021 arrest in the UK at the behest of US authorities was an abuse of the legal process. His UK lawyers said their client was “lured” to fly his private jet to London by a US spy who had told a person close to Weinzierl that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency — a claim that lawyers for the US declined to confirm or deny. Weinzierl was arrested at the airfield. 

According to the US, Odebrecht wired money to Meinl Bank from US accounts to book false tax write-offs in Brazil. It then “layered many of the resulting slush funds into a Meinl subsidiary bank in Antigua and Barbuda in order to pay bribes secretly to foreign officials and intermediaries,” prosecutors said. The indictment detailed a dizzying number of banks and shell companies used in the alleged money-laundering scheme, including banks in New York, Portugal, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Mozambique and Panama. 

Prosecutors said Friday Weinzierl should remain in federal custody while awaiting trial, saying he presents a serious flight risk because he has no ties to the US and has “substantial assets outside the country.” 

“That extradition involved a years-long battle that the defendant fought at every possible step,” said prosecutor Jonathan Siegel. 

“As long as he remained in the United Kingdom, the defendant could have hope that he would evade US court proceedings by fighting extradition,” Siegel wrote. “Those hopes have now been dashed, and his incentive to flee has therefore never been higher.”

Founded in 1923 as a savings club for employees of Julius Meinl AG, a coffee and grocery chain that prospered under the Austro-Hungarian empire, the bank faced collapse when the European Central Bank revoked its banking license. The ECB cited alleged failures in the prevention of money laundering, including in connection to Odebrecht. The bank entered into insolvency proceedings in 2020. 

In its guilty plea, Odebrecht acknowledged making secret payments of about $788 million to foreign government officials, their representatives and political parties. While it agreed to pay $4.5 billion, a federal judge later determined it could afford only $2.6 billion. 

The case is US v. Weinzierl, 20-cr-383, US District Court, Eastern District of New York .

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