pdvsa

The latest regarding novel ways for PDVSA to continue laughing at U.S. Treasury sanctions involves an offshore jurisdiction that was never featured among usual suspects: Labuan International Business and Financial Centre. Companies registered in Labuan are a bit like the old bearer shares structures of other jurisdictions: UBO records related to any given company are only to be made available to enquiring parties if the UBO allows it.

The Objective brings quite a scoop today: PDVSA retained Baltasar Garzon to act in some corruption cases in the Spanish jurisdiction. The cases involve procurement at BARIVEN, and appear to focus, particularly, on Roberto Rincon and Abraham Shiera. Eulogio del Pino signed for PDVSA, establishing objectives and association with ILOCAD, which is Garzon's shop.

This site has been critical of U.S. Treasury sanctions towards PDVSA / Venezuela. We have argued that, as implemented, sanctions were akin to a haphazard siege: cut access to main / back entrances, leave all other entry points open. We have reported how, despite sanctions, PDVSA hasn’t stopped trading its crude, assisted by a never ending queue of operators who are not American, i.e. do not have to observe / comply with Treasury sanctions. A lot of money has been made on the back of sanctions.

UPDATED 26/07/2021 - A few days ago a source informed this site that Bitumina Industries Limited had filed for bankruptcy in London. We tweeted about it and put the question to the London Gazette, which kindly came back today with corroboration. What this means is that Nynas largest shareholder (Bitumina's 49.9%) is out of the game.

Followers of the chavista disaster will remember when they told us that Iran was there, "to fix refineries", that Russia was there, "to increase output", that China was there, in an equal partnership of two nations that had decided that the best way forward was "to carve their own independent paths away from U.S. Imperialism". After each vacuous announcement, PDVSA's production was going to be propelled to 5 million, to 6 million, to X million, which coincide quite closely with the numbers that PDVSA would be producing today with its old partners had chavismo not happened.

The following is a report I was asked to write by the Organization of American States some time ago. It was meant to be part of a compendium of similar reports -from various authors- on the causes of Venezuela's humanitarian crisis: i.e. corruption. I publish it here, for future reference. Supporting notes and links can be seen in the pdf below.

Where Has Venezuela’s Money Gone?
By Alek Boyd

Check background here. In short, vessels Kitakaze (IMO 9221918) and Mirame (IMO 9227948) lifted about 3.8 million barrels of PDVSA crude in late December / early January. Tracor Trading Company Limited is shown in PDVSA's line up as final client. It is unclear what crude Kitakaze lifted, but Mirame loaded crude produced by PDVSA - Rosneft joint venture Petromonagas.

Joshua Goodman reports in "Venezuela hired Democratic Party donor for $6 million" about a FARA filing -by PDV USA Inc- that "...documents, which were disclosed Thursday, show a U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil giant PDVSA agreed to hire Marcia Wiss’ Washington law firm in March 2017.

There's a great deal of excitement on news reported by Christian Brönnimann and Sylvain Besson in Swiss media, about 9 billion (CHF) worth of money laundering transactions originating in Venezuela / PDVSA done by some of Switzerland's finest banks.

UPDATED 19/01/2021 - 18:53 GMT - In late December two tankers journeyed to Venezuela with their AIS transponders turned off: Kitakaze (IMO 9221918) and Mirame (IMO 9227948). PDVSA's shipping line up shows these tankers loaded a total of 3.8 million barrels of crude, on behalf of a new client: Tracor Trading Company Limited. Data from TankerTrackers.com revealed the vessels' position at loading.