Anderson Antunes, Contributor

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4/20/2014 @ 1:50PM |4,450 views

Even Alex Rodriguez Reportedly Almost Fell Victim To Eike Batista's Financial CollapseMove up Move down

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As has been widely reported this week, Brazil’s Federal Police have opened an investigation into former Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista for financial crimes, including insider trading, manipulation of markets and money laundering. Onetime the world’s 7th richest person, Batista lost his billionaire status earlier last year after the collapse of his once high-flying oil, mining and logistics empire, which two years ago was valued at over $60 billion and has since accumulated a mountain of debt.

Batista’s oil firm, OGPar (formerly known as OGX), filed for bankruptcy protection in October after defaulting on a $45 million bond payment. A few weeks later, Batista’s shipbuilder OSX Brasil SA also filed for bankruptcy protection. The two companies have combined debt of more than $7 billion, most of which is owed to foreign bondholders.

At his peak years, Batista’s appeal coincided with that of Brazil, whose economy expanded significantly during the early 2000s but has recently slowed amid the country’s inability to promote substantial changes to public spending and business relations. During those years, foreign investors lined up to take part into Brazil’s momentum, and many trusted Batista — dubbed the poster boy of Brazil’s upswing — with their money.

Some, however, remained a little bit more cautious, as was reported this Sunday by Elio Gaspari, a Brazilian journalist who writes a column for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. Gasperi revealed that while Batista was still the richest man in Brazil, he met with a group of foreign investors in Miami at a dinner party hosted by Jeffrey Soffer, the Florida-based real estate mogul who is married to supermodel Elle MacPherson.

According to Gaspari, professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez and his then girlfriend Cameron Diaz were also present at the party, and they were approached by Batista, who promised that OGX was on the verge of announcing significant oil discoveries. Before buying shares of OGX, though, Rodriguez called his financial advisor. “He told me to forget about it and never mention it again, because I could go to jail for a transaction like this,” Rodriguez said, according to Gaspari.

Eike Batista

That could cause even more trouble for Batista, since he is under scrutiny by Brazil’s market regulator CVM in a separate administrative probe in which he is accused of using privileged information to sell shares of OGX and manipulating the market.

“It’s excellent that everything get clarified,” Batista said in a telephone interview with The Wall Street Journal this week. “I’m very calm. Let them investigate.”

The addition of Alex Rodriguez to the soap opera that has become the brutal fall of Batista just shows how much of an imbroglio it really is.

This article is available online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2014/04/20/even-alex-rodriguez-reportedly-almost-fell-victim-to-eike-batistas-financial-collapse/