The Brazilian Billionaire Living in a Rat-Infested Jail

Twelve days ago, Andre Esteves moved into a cell with concrete beds. His head was shaved. Some of his fellow lodgers are rats, attracted by the landfill next door.

The 47-year-old is still a billionaire, but one using a collective squat toilet in a unit of the notorious Bangu penitentiary complex on the edge of Rio de Janeiro. Outside, smells from sewage ditches blend with whiffs of deep-fried tidbits women buy for their incarcerated husbands from a clutch of vendors near the entrance. Inside, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Grupo BTG Pactual, Latin America’s largest independent investment bank, washes with bar soap cut into slices by guards looking for contraband.

Esteves -- who once joked that BTG stood for Better than Goldman -- was arrested on Nov. 25 as part of a pay-to-play corruption probe called Operation Carwash that has engulfed state-run oil giant Petrobras and some of the country’s largest builders. The alleged scheme inflated prices for construction projects and kicked money back to Petrobras officials and others.

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