Former Vitol Trader Found Guilty of Violating FCPA, Money Laundering

Former commodities trader Javier Aguilar was convicted Feb. 23 of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing officials of Ecuadorian state-owned oil company Petroecuador. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York also said Aguilar was found guilty of laundering money used to bribe Ecuadorian officials of Petroecuador and of an affiliate of the Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex. He faces a maximum 30-year prison stint.

From 2015 to 2020, Aguilar worked with co-conspirators to bribe Ecuadorian officials to receive a $300 million contract to buy oil for the multinational energy and commodities trading firm Vitol, using a Middle Eastern state-owned entity to get around Petroecuador's restrictions on contracts with private companies. In return, the Ecuadorian officials ensured the contract went to the Mideast entity and Vitol. When those officials were replaced following Ecuador's 2017 presidential election, the new officials were also bribed, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Aguilar hid the scheme using "fake contracts, sham invoices and shell entities incorporated in Curacao, Panama, and Cayman Islands." The same money laundering system was used to launder bribes paid to two Pemex Procurement International officials. The U.S. Attorney's Office said Aguilar paid around $600,000 in bribes to Pemex officials to obtain contracts for Vitol to supply "hundreds of millions of dollars of ethane gas to PEMEX."