Houston Trader Pleads Guilty in PEMEX Bribery Case

A Texas commodity trader pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and engaging in interstate and foreign commerce to promote and to distribute the proceeds of commercial bribery for paying bribes to officials at PEMEX Procurement International (PPI), a wholly owned affiliate of the Mexican state-owned oil company, PEMEX. 

The plea follows Javier Aguilar's conviction earlier this year in a related case for paying bribess to Ecuadorian officials and laundering the funds for both the Ecuadoran and Mexican schemes.

 When sentenced in both cases, Aguilar faces a maximum sentence of 40 years’ imprisonment as well as $7,129,938 in criminal forfeiture.

Between 2015 and 2020, Aguilar was a trader in the Houston office of Vitol, Inc.  the U.S. affiliate of the Vitol group of companies, which together form one of the world’s largest energy trading firms. 

As part of the scheme, Aguilar and his co-conspirators paid approximately $600,000 in bribes to two senior officials at PPI to obtain numerous contracts for Vitol to supply hundreds of millions of dollars of liquid ethane to PEMEX. 

To conceal the scheme, Aguilar and his co-conspirators used a series of fake contracts, sham invoices and shell entities incorporated in Curaçao and Mexico.  The defendant and his co-conspirators also used alias email accounts to communicate about the scheme, and code words, including “shoes,” “medicine,” “invitations” and “coffee,” to describe the bribes.

In December 2020, Vitol admitted to bribing officials in Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil in violation of the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA.  Vitol entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York. 

As a part of the resolution, Vitol agreed to pay a combined $135 million in penalties as part of a coordinated resolution with the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and authorities in Brazil.

The FCPA conspiracy charge, based in the Southern District of Texas (SDTX), was initially filed in the EDNY in December 2022 as part of a superseding indictment consolidating both the Ecuador- and Mexico-related conduct. 

In May 2023, the government consented to Aguilar’s pre-trial motion to dismiss that charge in the EDNY on venue grounds.  That charge and others related were then refiled in SDTX in August 2023.  As part of his guilty plea, Aguilar consented to transfer the SDTX case back to the EDNY, reconsolidating the cases.

Seven of the defendant’s co-conspirators have pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in the scheme and are awaiting sentencing.  Together, these individuals have agreed to forfeit more than $63 million.

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