Federal Police seize up to R$ 670,348,945.70 in assets tied to Banco Digimais in São Paulo raid

Brazil’s Federal Police launched Operação Miragem on Tuesday (23) to break up what it calls a fraudulent scheme inside Banco Digimais, the bank controlled by Bishop Edir Macedo, founder of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD). For high-risk PSPs, the point is not the church politics; it is the familiar payment-infrastructure problem: alleged balance-sheet manipulation, fake solvency, and suspected abuses inside a regulated financial institution.

1. More than 50 Federal Police officers executed nine search-and-seizure warrants issued by the Federal Court in São Paulo. The court also lifted banking and tax secrecy for the suspects and authorized the seizure and blocking of assets and funds up to R$ 670,348,945.70.
2. According to the Federal Police, the investigation reviewed reports produced by the Banco Central do Brasil that pointed to serious irregularities in the way the institution was run by its administrators. Macedo is one of the people being investigated.
3. The core allegation is a systematic manipulation of balance sheets and accounting results designed to hide the bank’s real financial condition and make it appear solvent to supervisory authorities. The investigation says this also involved the overvaluation of assets and the artificial generation of revenue amounting to hundreds of millions of reais.
4. The Federal Police are also examining allegedly illegal financial operations carried out for the benefit of the bank’s controlling company, as well as possible falsification and manipulation of information entered into official regulatory reporting systems.
5. Those under investigation may face charges under Law No. 7.492/1986 for fraudulent management, insertion of false data in accounting statements, and prohibited credit operations. In other words: the file is not about a bookkeeping dispute, but about conduct that goes straight to the integrity of the financial institution and its reporting to the regulator.

IURD, led by Edir Macedo, says it is present in more than 95 countries. The bank side of the story is the part payments people will watch: once a regulator starts talking about falsified reporting and concealed losses, counterparties tend to care less about brand and more about exposure, controls, and who else was relying on the same numbers.