“We are a transparent company and have nothing to hide,” said Adam Kaufmann, former chief investigator for the New York District Attorney, to the Wall Street Journal regarding investigations initiated by his former office and other federal agencies against his client Derwick Associates. A transparent company shouldn’t need an army of lawyers and PR experts to obscure operational aspects, but perhaps transparency has a different meaning within the realm of Derwick. In any case, Derwick has been caught lying repeatedly, and it appears new evidence of another lie has just emerged.
First, a bit of history. When Derwick Associates sued the Banco Venezolano de Credito in Florida in 2012, it claimed in its defamation lawsuit that Derwick was co-founded “on or around June 2007” (p.7). In fact, Derwick Associates was already in existence: a Panamanian company registered in 2003. It seems that the company was merely a shell that Alejandro Betancourt and Pedro Trebbau acquired immediately. Nothing wrong with that. More recently, two lawsuits have been filed against Derwick: one in New York by Otto Reich, and another in Florida by Thor Halvorssen. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Derwick Associates is under investigation by federal and New York City prosecutors (Kaufmann’s former colleague).
In 2009, when an emergency was declared in Venezuela, Derwick secured—without bidding—12 contracts over a span of 14 months. Since then, numerous requests have been made to Derwick to find out exactly how much Venezuelan public money was allocated in contracts. Aside from a leaked Letter of Intent to this site, no information regarding Derwick’s contracts has been published. Derwick has refused to open itself to scrutiny, citing confidentiality clauses.
Derwick maintains that it is a Venezuelan concern, thus U.S. investigations have no jurisdiction over its activities. Such claims contradict details found in the Letter of Intent, which describes Derwick as a Panamanian company represented by Alejandro Betancourt, also identified as an Italian citizen, while another leak now shows that Derwick Associates was operating in the U.S. in 2008, nearly a year before signing that Letter of Intent with a PDVSA subsidiary. Curiously, the only Derwick Associates that existed in 2008 was the Panamanian one. So, why would Neil Karr receive turbine offers from ProEnergy Services on behalf of Derwick Associates at a Florida address? Who is this Neil Karr?
The first result of a Google search is Karr’s LinkedIn profile. In 2008, Karr was “Director of IntiPower.” IntiPower was a Florida corporation, registered in 2006 and dissolved in 2013. It has a sketchy website. But more importantly, the registered address of IntiPower was changed in January 2008 to 157 Hampton Point Drive, Suite 4, St. Augustine, Florida 32092. That same address was used by Joaquín Mavares, ProEnergy Services’ International Sales Manager, in his offer to Derwick Associates. Neil Karr (see pdf below).
Currently, Neil Karr is the vice president of Sancus Energy and Power, a Texas corporation. Karr’s colleagues at Sancus include Rolando Pestana, head of IntiPower until its dissolution, and Joe Bradford. Searches for Joe Bradford yield quite interesting results. Beyond things like connections to Hollywood actor Kevin Costner, Bradford claims to have been the director of GESCA Gas de Venezuela, whose contact person was Maite Candina, likely the daughter of Iker Candina from Derwick. In Derwick’s lawsuit against the Banco Venezolano de Crédito, Betancourt claimed (p.7) that he was “Director of BGB/GESCA, a Venezuela-based subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. based in Japan.” In the same paragraph, Betancourt also stated he had been an “external consultant for Gazprom and Gazprombank for their operations in the Andean Region.” Our research concluded that Betancourt’s claims about BGB/GESCA were unfounded exaggerations and that he was never involved with Gazprom. However, Bradford was. Is Betancourt using Bradford’s professional experience as his own?
But the wonders don’t stop there. The metadata of ProEnergy Services shared with Neil Karr, after all, might have been manipulated, identifies Joaquín Mavares as the author. For communications and private proposals, at least since December 2008, Derwick has used the credentials and history of IntiPower, Bradford, and ProEnergy in its attempts to generate new agreements. Karr, Pestana, Mavares, Bradford, Candina, IntiPower, Sancus, ProEnergy (all associated with Derwick at one point or another) are individuals/corporations based in the U.S. All of them. Derwick even claimed to have built the Harry D. Mattison power plant in Arkansas. How can they then allege a lack of jurisdiction? Or transparency? I guess the recent ruling by Judge Oetken allowing jurisdictional discovery will reveal many things about this “transparent” company, and I’m sure Adam Kaufmann, with his many years of successful prosecution against white-collar bullies like Derwick, will prepare totally plausible explanations.