Houston Energy Trader Pleads Guilty for Role in Paying $600,000 in International Bribes – Stonesoupnetwork

HOUSTON – Prosecutors say a former Houston energy trader has pleaded guilty to his role in a bribery scheme with Mexican government officials to secure contracts.

PREVIOUS: Houston Oil Trader Charged With International Bribery

Court documents indicate that Javier Aguilar, 50, and other co-conspirators paid approximately $600,000 in bribes to senior officials at PEMEX Procurement Interional Inc. (PPI) in exchange for their help in winning contracts.

Aguilar was a trader at Vitol Inc., the US subsidiary of the world’s largest independent energy trading company, working out of their Houston office. Between 2017 and 2020, prosecutors say the bribe money was used to secure multiple contracts that allowed Vitol to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to PPI’s wholly-owned subsidiary of Mexico’s state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).

SEE ALSO: “Operation Cash Back”: several arrests in a complex investigation into bank fraud led by the Mont Belvieu police

To conceal the scheme, Aguilar and his co-conspirators, according to court documents, used a series of contracts, false invoices and shell entities based in Curacao and Mexico. They also used fictitious email accounts to discuss the scheme using passwords for bribes, such as “shoes,” “medication,” “invitations” and “coffee.”

“The Southern District of Texas (SDTX) is the starting point for the fight against corruption and bribery in Latin America,” said US Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani. “The prosecutors in my office, who are experts in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), will continue to bring justice to those who undermine the integrity of Texas’ vital energy sector by receiving illegal benefits fueled by greed. This guilty plea marks the beginning of the process of repairing the damage caused by Aguilar and serves as a warning to those who might seek to emulate him and his co-conspirators.”

MORE CRIME RELATED NEWS

Aguilar is one of seven co-conspirators who have pleaded guilty to their respective roles in the case and are awaiting sentencing. They have agreed to forfeit more than $63 million in restitution in connection with this and related cases.

As part of his guilty plea, Aguilar agreed to transfer the case from Texas to New York, consolidate the cases and forfeit more than $7 million. The plea follows Aguilar’s related conviction at trial in February for conspiracy to violate the FCPA, violating the FCPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with schemes to bribe Ecuadorian and Mexican officials. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for the money laundering conviction and five years for each of the other offenses.