There seems to be a certain degree of discrimination regarding international criminal investigations involving the justice and law enforcement in the United States. The entire world rejoiced when the U.S. sidelined Sepp Blatter for a while. When it comes to rampant corruption in the oil companies, Petrobras seems to be on everyone’s lips, due in our opinion to the quixotic LavaJato investigation (car wash) led by Sergio Moro in Brazil. However, we must insist on a couple of facts: 1) the LavaJato investigation, in terms of bribery/misappropriation/loss of funds, is child’s play compared to PDVSA, and 2) many of the large energy traders involved in Petrobras corruption are also connected to PDVSA, but the amounts are much greater.
For instance, take Trafigura, one of the Swiss trading houses currently under investigation in relation to LavaJato. Sources have reported to this site that the dealings between PDVSA and Trafigura in recent years exceed $40 billion. And Trafigura continues to work with PDVSA to this day, despite being one of the main suspects in a massive fraud and bribery scheme. Then there’s Glencore, which has also conducted a phenomenal amount of business with the Chavista regime in Venezuela. And let’s not forget Vitol, Lukoil, Colonial, Novum, and others.
All the major energy traders are or have been involved in Venezuela, simply because PDVSA, as a oil-producing conglomerate, is or has been much larger than Petrobras. The Justice Department is supposed to investigate Glencore’s operations in Venezuela. It is also anticipated that the Justice Department has already launched an investigation into Glencore, Trafigura, and Vitol’s operations with Brazilian Petrobras. Now the FBI is set to investigate Vitol’s executives in the United States.
When will the penny drop? When will authorities realize that the same executives, traders, and companies involved in Petrobras corruption have a much greater criminal footprint with PDVSA? Isn’t it clear enough now that Antonio Maarraoui, the head of Vitol for Latin America, in his capacity was also dealing with PDVSA? Maarraoui is indeed a co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by PDVSA against the same group of companies under investigation in Brazil. What about Vitol’s activities in Venezuela, will they be investigated by the FBI?
Will the Justice Department finally recognize that Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Lukoil, etc., are nothing but headquarters of corruption? Isn’t there enough evidence to support the claim that corruption IS their business model wherever they operate? And is Maarraoui the exception here? What about Patricio Norris, Sergio de la Vega, José Larocca, Maximiliano Poveda, and Roberto Finocchi, to name just a few? Where would they be, or rather, how much business could they have generated without Francisco Morillo, Leonardo Baquero, Daniel Lutz, Bo Ljungberg, Jorge, and Bruno Luz? Would Glencore have made similar deals worth 40 billion, say, with Statoil?
We note the need to sanction PDVSA as an anti-corruption measure. We believe that Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Lukoil, and others belong to the same SDN category and shamefully continue to lick their chops. The multilingualism, the ‘Swiss sophistication,’ and the pinstripe suits do not wash away the blatant criminal behavior exhibited. Venezuela is a victim, just like Brazil, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and all the other resource-rich developing countries where these thugs operate. South America is grappling with the largest man-made humanitarian crisis in its history, precisely due to corruption fueled by local crooks and their international partners.
A measure similar to the Helms-Burton Act should be considered when it comes to Venezuela, whose resources have been plundered by a gang of Chavista kleptocrats assisted by the Antonio Maarraouis of this world. Just yesterday we were discussing on a radio program that after transferring funds to the state, PDVSA ended up with about $766 billion during the reign of Rafael Ramírez. How much of that ended up lining the pockets of Swiss banks and energy trading houses? Shouldn’t they be investigated with endless scrutiny?
This site is not willing to place all the blame on Vitol, Trafigura, and others, but without them, without their unscrupulous greed and frivolous consideration towards corruption, things could have been different. With the prospect of civil war and millions already displaced, we can only hope that judicial and law enforcement systems worldwide begin to connect the dots and reduce the entire structure to its real size.