MIAMI — The corruption trial of a former senior Ecuadorian official charged with laundering more than $10 million in bribes through Miami’s banking system and real estate market may not feature a household name as a defendant.

But the Brazilian company accused of paying off Ecuador’s ex-comptroller, Carlos Ramon Polit, is one of the biggest engineering and construction firms in the world. Its name is Odebrecht, which admitted to a massive bribery scheme across the Americas in 2016 and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department.

Polit’s trial, a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, started Tuesday with opening statements in Miami federal court, offering for the first time the prosecution of an Odebrecht-linked defendant on conspiracy and money laundering charges in the United States.

Polit, 73, who was arrested in Miami in March 2022, was portrayed by federal prosecutors as an influential Ecuadorian bureaucrat who extorted the conglomerate for millions of dollars in cash bribes in exchange for making more than $100 million in government fines on a hydroelectric power-plant project disappear.

“He was one of the most powerful people in Ecuador — someone you didn’t want as an enemy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Berger told the 12-person jury in a packed federal courtroom. “Millions of dollars of these bribes were laundered into Miami with the help of the defendant’s son.”

“In the end, Odebrecht got what it paid for: the removal of those $100 million in fines,” said Berger, noting that two of the Brazilian firm’s former executives who received non-prosecution deals with the U.S. government are key witnesses against Polit.

Polit’s son, John, a Miami banker, has not been charged with the father, who is standing trial alone. It remains unclear whether John Polit will be charged in the aftermath of the three-week trial, but his name came up repeatedly during opening statements Tuesday in connection with the alleged bribery payments moving through Panamanian and Miami banking accounts through intermediary companies into several local real estate deals, including the purchase of an office building and a luxury home in exclusive Cocoplum in Coral Gables.

Carlos Polit’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, tried to distance his client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme.

“Carlos Ramon Polit did not launder a single dollar” into Miami, Srebnick told the jurors, describing his client as a former private businessman who joined Ecuador’s government as its comptroller in 2010. “Not a single dollar bill was found in the possession of Carlos Ramon Polit.”

Srebnick said the real criminals are the two former Odebrecht executives who cut plea deals in Brazil and non-prosecution agreements with the U.S. government for their testimony against Polit.

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