A former Vitol trader faces up to 30 years in prison after being convicted in the US of paying more than $1m in bribes to secure a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Javier Aguilar, 49, was found guilty of bribing officials of Petroecuador, the Ecuadorean state-owned oil company, after an eight-week trial. He was also convicted on Friday of laundering money used to bribe officials from Ecuador and an affiliate of Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex.
Prosecutors said Aguilar used shell companies and sham invoices for the bribery operation to obtain a 30-month contract worth $300m to Vitol to ship crude produced by Petroecuador in 2016. Officials called it a “sophisticated bribery and money laundering scheme”.
“The defendant and his co-conspirators sought to enrich themselves through criminal back room deals,” said Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
“The people of Ecuador and Mexico deserved better and companies that play by the rules should know that the process is not rigged.”
Aguilar, a trader in Vitol’s Houston office between 2015 and 2020, used a Middle Eastern state-owned body to circumvent Petroecuador’s restrictions on contracts with private companies.
Officials were then bribed to ensure the Middle East body got the contract. New officials were put in place after Ecuador’s elections in 2017 and Aguilar and his co-conspirators agreed to bribe them as well, prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
Aguilar had denied the charges and claimed he was framed by his boss at Vitol. He said he thought he had hired legitimate consultants to help win the contract. His lawyer told Reuters he plans to appeal.
Seven others have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Aguilar faces further charges over an alleged bribery scheme involving Pemex officials to secure a $200m gas contract for Vitol.
The charges are the latest chapter in a long-running scandal in which Vitol Inc, the US affiliate of the world’s largest independent oil trader, agreed in 2020 to pay $135m to settle US investigations into bribery claims in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico.(Copyright)
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