On May 23, 2022, the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida sentenced Carlos Enrique Urbano Fermin to 120 days of intermittent confinement (to be served in four separate 30-day segments) and five years of probation.
Urbano Fermin is a Venezuelan businessman who, through several companies he owned or controlled, supplied goods and services to subsidiaries of the state-owned oil company of Venezuela, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). He pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy on April 19, 2021. According to the criminal Information to which he pled, Fermin bribed a high-ranking prosecutor in Venezuela to prevent criminal charges from being brought against his companies for allegedly engaging in “corrupt activities related to the procurement process at . . . PDVSA [s]ubsidiaries.” Urbano Fermin received a sentence below the US Sentencing Guidelines as a result of his substantial assistance to the US including by — as set out in a May 20, 2022 motion for sentence reduction filed by the US Department of Justice — providing substantial assistance “in the investigation and prosecution of others who have committed crimes against the United States.”