MIAMI — Lawyers for a former high-ranking Ecuador official accused of taking more than $10 million in bribes and laundering the money in Miami tried to stir up doubt in the minds of federal jurors during his federal trial.

They argued that Carlos Ramon Polit didn’t touch a single dollar of the alleged bribes that prosecutors say were laundered through local banks into Miami-area real estate purchases by his son, John Polit, a banker who handled the transactions but didn’t stand trial with him.

“You have every reason to doubt,” defense attorney Howard Srebnick told the Miami federal jury during closing arguments on Monday. “What evidence do you see that Carlos Polit engaged in a single transaction in the United States? [There’s] not one shred of evidence.”

The jury didn’t buy it.

On Tuesday, the dozen jurors unanimously found the 73-year-old former Ecuadorian government comptroller guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering and five related counts, carrying up to 20 years in prison. The jurors took six hours, starting Monday afternoon, to reach their guilty verdicts before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. She must still set a sentencing date for Polit, who immediately surrendered to prison authorities and will be held at the Federal Detention Center.

The two-week corruption trial not only showcased Polit, but the giant Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, which bribed the former Ecuadorian official over several years to make $100 million in government fines on a hydroelectric power plant project disappear.

In 2016, Odebrecht admitted to a massive bribery scheme across the Americas and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in a record corruption settlement with the Justice Department. Polit’s trial was a spin-off of that high-profile scandal, offering for the first time the prosecution of an Odebrecht-linked defendant on conspiracy and money laundering charges in the United States.

“He used his power to ensure he got his money,” Justice Department prosecutor Alexander Kramer told the jurors in closing arguments, explaining that Polit didn’t have to launder the money himself to be found guilty. “He was just as responsible as his son. When his son was hiding that money [in Miami] ... that was Carlos Polit breaking the law.”

Polit’s son, John, was listed as “co-conspirator 1” in an indictment charging the father, who stood trial alone. It remains unclear whether John Polit will be charged, but his name came up repeatedly in the bribery payment transfers through Panamanian and Miami banking accounts. The money moved through intermediary companies into nearly a dozen local real estate deals, including the purchase of a Miami office building and a luxury home in exclusive Cocoplum in Coral Gables.

Carlos Polit’s defense attorneys, Srebnick and Jacqueline Perczek, tried to distance their client from the alleged bribery-fueled money laundering scheme, saying the real criminals were 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 at the Miami trial.

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