Economy

The Turkish arms manufacturer operating in Brazil

A Turkish national has been behind a bomb-producing factory in southern Brazil. His company has sold arms believed to be used in civil wars in Yemen and Mali

turkish Turkish arms manufacturer
Saudi Air Force during a military exercise in 2021. Photo: RSAF/MediaCenter

In October 2019, Turkish investor Emrah Kalan spent a week in Brasília to meet with senior government officials and influential members of Congress. At the time, Mr. Kalan had just made an investment in AEQ, a warhead factory valued at USD 2.2 million in the city of Quatro Barras, in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná. Soon after, Mr. Kalan was named AEQ’s vice president.

During the same trip in 2019, Mr. Kalan was introduced to senior officials at the Defense Ministry by Luiz Alberto Cezar, a Brazilian businessman who is an honorary Turkish consul in Paraná. “When Mr. Kalan purchased his stake in AEQ, he didn’t have any contacts within the government, so we developed the company’s brand and networking,” Mr. Cezar recalls.

Part of this networking effort consisted of introducing the Turkish businessman to Pedro Lupion, the government’s deputy whip in Congress and chairman of the Paraná branch of the right-wing Democratas party.

Multiple sources familiar with the meeting told The Brazilian Report that Mr. Kalan wined and dined officials, telling them he wanted to “work closely with the Brazilian government,” while presenting himself as AEQ’s controlling shareholder. However, his name is nowhere to be found on the company’s documents, which instead state that AEQ is owned by Delaware-based limited liability companies Alianqa and Q Terra.

Known as LLCs, these entities...

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