Former Executive Director at Venezuelan State-Owned Oil Company (Guilty in $1BLlaundering)

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/former-executive-director-venezuelan-state-owned-oil-company-petroleos-de-venezuela-sa

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of Florida

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Former Executive Director at Venezuelan State-Owned Oil Company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., Pleadsto Role in Billion-Dollar Money Laundering Conspiracy

A former executive director at the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), pleaded guilty today for his role in a billion-dollar international scheme to launder funds embezzled from PDVSA.
(snip)

Abraham Edgardo Ortega, 51, a Venezuelan national, who was PDVSA’s executive director of financial planning, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Southern District of Florida, who accepted his plea today.

As part of his plea, Ortega admitted that in his position with PDVSA, he accepted $5 million in bribes to give priority loan status to a French company and a Russian bank, which were both minority shareholders in joint ventures with PDVSA. Ortega was paid for this bribery scheme with the proceeds of a currency exchange scheme, through which $1.2 billion was embezzled, through bribery and fraud from PDVSA. Ortega also admitted that in his position with PDVSA, he accepted $12 million in bribes for his participation in a PDVSA embezzlement scheme involving a loan and foreign-exchange contract.

Ortega admitted that he worked with a co-defendant to launder $12 million that he received as bribe payments. Ortega admitted that he and his co-defendant laundered $12 million through a sophisticated false-investment scheme that received money from a payment made to look like an investment into a fund, but, in fact, the payment was actually laundered out of the fund. Surrounding and supporting this false-investment laundering scheme were complicit money managers, brokerage firms, banks and real estate investment firms in the United States and elsewhere, operating as a network of professional money launderers, Ortega admitted.
(snip)