In September 2013, while conducting research and seeking contacts for a publication about Luis Oberto, I received an email from a source stating that Oberto and Francisco Convit had purchased an oil well for $45 million in Zulia. Francisco Convit is one of the executives at Derwick Associates (yes, Derwick Associates aimed to be a “leading” company in the contracting, acquisition, and installation of power plants). Through further research, I discovered that Convit was indeed a director at something called Derwick Oil & Gas, incorporated in Barbados in 2011.
So, Derwick Associates shares executives/directors with Derwick Oil & Gas, and a source reported that Luis Oberto and Francisco Convit had partnered in an oil well. I searched and inquired but could not find any corroboration to prove the information leaked, beyond the details of the Barbados registration. There had always been a possibility that Derwick would venture into oil. The contracting for power plants in Venezuela took place after signing a Letter of Intent on September 30, 2009, with BARIVEN, a subsidiary of PDVSA, which detailed the equipment and installed capacity up to the last megawatt.
It was natural (a foot in the case of the door) that Derwick would “expand” or “diversify” into oil, having exhausted all potential overvalued offers related to power plants and intriguing billions in the process. Given the type of relationship they had developed with BARIVEN/PDVSA, and the way they were hired—that is, BARIVEN/PDVSA agreed to submit any details related to the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds to Derwick—their oil venture was to be expected. Furthermore, they could claim a certain degree of “expertise” in oil-related matters, as Edgard Romero Lazo (Operations Manager at Derwick) had been a contractor for PDVSA in Zulia and even worked for a while with Odebrecht, lending a touch of corrupt pedigree.
In the absence of evidence or a leaked contract, what I had was inconclusive. But then, a source in Madrid mentioned that the Derwick guys were boasting, at social gatherings, about an exciting “new venture,” hinting that it was energy-related but separate from their power plant business. A separate source trusted that Maersk Drilling Venezuela would be sold to a group of “Venezuelan investors.” Maersk Drilling Venezuela operates several barges for PDVSA in Lake Maracaibo under management contracts. Having found a clear statement from Maersk about its intention to divest its operations in Venezuela, I inquired about it and they confirmed they were indeed looking to sell (perhaps due to a multibillion-dollar debt from PDVSA).
Could Derwick be that group of “Venezuelan investors”? But this information emerged after that email I received in September of last year, and Maersk has still not finalized any deal regarding its Venezuelan barges.
However, in the last two weeks, two leaks brought the issue to light. The first was about Derwick Oil & Gas’s offer, as of now, for oil and gas to Morgan Stanley. I consulted some sources and found out that the former U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Hans Hertell, has been following Derwick’s orders in certain sectors for some time. Hertell, who has his own little dirty secrets from his strangely long tenure as ambassador in the DR, claimed that Derwick Oil & Gas was positioned to sell 75,000 barrels per day. At today’s prices, that’s worth approximately $2.7 billion a year.
Hertell’s claim sent me searching for an official announcement from PDVSA regarding the granting of rights to Derwick Oil & Gas to openly market Venezuelan oil, not PDVSA’s, but their own. Such matters should be public, according to the Constitution and the current Hydrocarbons Law in Venezuela. Additionally, companies wishing to sell Venezuelan oil and related products in international markets must register with PDVSA or establish some form of partnership with the Venezuelan oil giant. Unfortunately, there is nothing, not a single statement or mention in the latest PDVSA report. Most likely, as with all of Derwick’s contracts with Venezuelan institutions in the past, there is some clause in a private agreement between PDVSA and Derwick Oil & Gas that prohibits either party from disclosing any details about their agreement. Damn the laws.
The second leak was more revealing. It turns out that the Derwick team also visited BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Brazil. Pactual, let’s not forget, acquired 50% of Petrobras’s African unit for $1.53 billion. So they might have a similar interest in Venezuela. Well, at that time, the Derwick team wasn’t selling oil and gas but rather oil concessions in Venezuela. Derwick’s offer to potential investors was to form 50-50 “joint ventures,” claiming that beyond capital investment, their added value is that, as quasi agents of PDVSA, they can secure approvals in Venezuela without issues. How on earth can Derwick offer oil concessions in Venezuela to an investment bank? Is PDVSA outsourcing its international investment strategy to increase production to companies like Derwick now? And what kind of agreement does Derwick have with PDVSA that allows for partnership offers to outside players?
So now there’s a leak from September 2013, stating that one of the directors of Derwick Oil & Gas bought an oil well, reinforced by gossip from Madrid in early 2014, confirmed by offers of oil and gas to Morgan Stanley, and offers of oil concessions to BTG Pactual. This is more than simple coincidence, I believe.
Now all kinds of gossip make sense. There is this journalist in Spain named Marta González. She blogs for Hola, the Spanish gossip church. She was married to Miguel Palomo Danko, son of Palomo Linares, a famous bullfighter. Linares began dating Lilia López, mother of Alejandro Betancourt (CEO of Derwick). López has a daughter, Lilia Jimena, who fell in love with Linares’s son. In other words, Linares and López are a couple (some say their relationship caused Linares’s divorce), and Linares’s son and López’s daughter are also a couple (some say their relationship caused Palomo Danko’s divorce). But the important thing here is that González was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement with her ex-husband to finalize their divorce. González is prohibited from talking or revealing anything about Alejandro Betancourt’s business (i.e., Derwick).
Readers might get lost in all this, but González’s ex-husband (Miguel Palomo Danko) was the broker who managed Derwick’s purchase of that 1,300-hectare hunting estate in Toledo, near Madrid. It is in that estate where all kinds of parties are held with friends and potential business partners. It’s where deals could have been struck with Rafael Ramírez (CEO of PDVSA), and it was a Madrid source who first corroborated with gossip the email I received last September regarding Derwick’s involvement in oil.
Followers of Venezuelan corruption will remember the last time a ghost company like Derwick, with no track record, tried to sell oil with the involvement of a rather infamous Republican and how it all ended (Free Market Petroleum and Jack Kemp). More recently, the marriage of convenience between Al Cárdenas and Derwick ended up costing the former head of ACU much more than he would like to admit.
If luck has it, when the pending RICO lawsuit against Derwick in the U.S. finally comes to an end in court, we will see the magnitude of Derwick’s corruption. If that day arrives, David Osio, for instance, won’t be able to enjoy those beautiful sunsets perched in his Millennium Tower apartment, nor will he be able to launder more Derwick money with his neighbor on the 60th floor…