The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced the arrests of Texas resident Juan Carlos Cairo-Padron and Alabama resident Thomas Michael Fortinberry for allegedly supplying industrial goods used in petrochemical refining operations to U.S.-sanctioned entities in Venezuela. Cairo and Fortinberry were charged in the U.S District Court for the Southern District of Texas with U.S. sanctions violations for their participation in an elaborate sanctions evasion scheme. They were also charged with smuggling goods from the United States and international promotional money laundering for allegedly using foreign bank accounts to move funds derived from the scheme into and out of the United States while attempting to conceal the identities of the parties involved in the transactions.
According to the complaint, from at least 2022 through the present, Cairo, a Venezuelan national and lawful permanent resident of the United States, and Fortinberry, a U.S. citizen who worked for Cairo, allegedly sold millions of dollars’ worth of chemical catalysts, industrial equipment and related services, including inspection services, to steel mills and petrochemical companies that were subject to U.S. sanctions, including Venezuelan state-owned steel plant Complejo Siderungico de Guayana S.A. (COMSIGUA) and Venezuelan state-owned oil and gas company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA). According to federal prosecutors, the two usually arranged to have the catalysts (or industrial goods) shipped to their customers directly from China or arranged to have the catalysts shipped from China to the United States or a distribution warehouse in Europe for onward transport to their customers. Cairo and Fortinberry allegedly made and effort to conceal the illegal transactions from U.S. law enforcement officials by listing U.S. and overseas front companies that served as intermediaries on the shipping documents and transferring millions of dollars linked to illegal transactions between bank accounts in the United States, Spain and China.