On August 21, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced that Houston resident and Mexican citizen Javier Aguilar, a former oil and gas trader for Vitol, Inc., a commodities trading firm, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) and for engaging in interstate and foreign commerce to promote and distribute the proceeds of a commercial bribery scheme in violation of the Travel Act. According to court documents, the scheme involved paying approximately $600,000 in bribes to two senior officials at PEMEX Procurement International Inc. (“PPI”), a wholly owned affiliate of Petróleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company. The guilty plea was entered just six months after a federal jury in New York convicted Aguilar in a related case for his role in the payment of more than $1 million in bribes to officials of Petroecuador, Ecuador’s state-owned oil and gas company, and laundering the funds for both the Ecuador and Mexico bribery schemes.
In August 2023, Aguilar was indicted for FCPA violations and other charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas for allegedly conspiring with others to pay the approximately $600,000 in bribes while working as a trader for Vitol, Inc., the U.S. affiliate of one of the world’s largest energy trading firms. The bribes were allegedly paid between 2017 and 2020 to enable Vitol to obtain and retain numerous contracts with PEMEX, including a contract to supply ethane to PEMEX through PPI. As part of Aguilar’s plea agreement, the case was transferred back to New York. Aguilar also consented to forfeiting approximately $7.1 million.
According to the DOJ, seven of Aguilar’s co-conspirators are awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty for their roles in the schemes. In total, these defendants have agreed to forfeit more than $63 million.
In December 2020, Vitol entered into a global resolution with the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Brazilian authorities to resolve their bribery investigations against the company. As part of that resolution, Vitol agreed to pay a total of $135 million in penalties and admitted to bribing officials in Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil in violation of the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA.