The corruption case between state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and Swiss energy giant Vitol has reached its first trial in the United States. Javier Aguilar, the 49-year-old US citizen who in 2020 said he paid bribes to officials in Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil, appeared for the first time Monday before a federal judge in Texas.
The United States accuses Aguilar of violating the anti-bribery provisions of the…
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The corruption case between state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and Swiss energy giant Vitol has reached its first trial in the United States. Javier Aguilar, the 49-year-old US citizen who in 2020 said he paid bribes to officials in Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil, appeared for the first time Monday before a federal judge in Texas.
The United States accuses Aguilar of violating anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The five-count indictment, filed on August 3, alleges that Aguilar was a former oil manager and trader for Vitol Inc, the US subsidiary of the Vitol group of companies, one of the world’s largest energy traders. “The former employee allegedly agreed with others to bribe Mexican officials to obtain commercial benefits related to contracts with the Mexican government, through Pemex Procurement International (PPI). He is also accused of money laundering in connection with the scheme,” reads the statement from the Department of State. American Justice.
In December 2020, Vitol executives admitted to authorities in the United States that they had paid bribes to Petroleos Mexicanos, as well as officials in Brazil and Ecuador, in return for inside information that would help them win contract bids. The case initially took place in New York, where the judge later dropped the charges, saying that state was not the appropriate country to handle the case. At the time, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, made his own complaint, to which a parallel investigation was launched in Mexico.
A few months later, Pemex’s general manager, Octavio Romero, reported that Vitol had offered $17 million to compensate for the damages resulting from the said corruption, as well as to complete work on the contracts in question “at no cost”. For his part, Lopez Obrador said the compensation was about $30 million higher. It wasn’t until June 2021 that López Obrador said in his press conference, noting his findings from the investigation in Mexico, that Vitol had to provide the names of the Pemex employees who had taken the bribes. In September 2021, Reuters It stated that Pemex canceled its contracts with Vitol, to resume negotiations after a year.
According to the US Department of Justice, Aguilar allegedly met with purchasing managers at PPI, Pemex’s private Houston arm, between September 2017 and April 2018, and agreed to make irregular payments in exchange for classified inside information to help Vitol win business with PPI, including a contract to supply Ethane to Pemex through PPI. Aguilar reportedly agreed to make payments totaling about $600,000 to help Vitol win the ethane contract.
“In furtherance of the bribery scheme and concealment of proceeds from it, Aguilar and his associates caused bribes to be paid through a series of transactions and shell companies, according to the charges,” the statement from Texas read.
Although PPI operates as a private company in the US, its employees should be prosecuted as public employees, because it is a wholly owned subsidiary of a state-owned company, US federal authorities say. This could have implications for the case of two former employees of the CFE’s private foreign arm, CFE International, who are facing a civil case in the US for allegedly awarding influence-peddling contracts to an unknown US company.
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