pdvsa

As soon as we became aware of Iran's flotilla of gasoline cargoes headed for Venezuela, we said:

This site first became aware of David Rivera around the time David Osío was crowing about some gong the U.S. Congress was allegedly going to bestow on him, for "distinguished contributions". Rivera organised the charade.

UPDATED 15/05/2020 - The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed Nynas from its list of sanctioned entities yesterday. Nynas published a release, in which it claimed that PDVSA (Nynas' majority shareholder) had "...reduced the percentage of Nynas shares it owns to 15 percent of all shares currently issued.

A question we get often, from analysts trying to make sense of what's happening with PDVSA's trading, finances, assets, etc., is: what's going on with crude deliveries? Maritime tracking apps / software are, in Venezuela's particular case, not fit for purpose, for these rely on vessels' AIS transponders to broadcast geolocations which are picked by terrestrial or satellite receivers. This information can then be seen on maps easily. But what happens when ships switch transponders off, which has become the new norm in most of the tankers involved with PDVSA?

UPDATED - Further to Rosneft's recent "sale" of its Venezuela assets to new Roszarubezhneft venture, we've been trying to pierce the veil of fakenews about the move.

Rafael Ramirez needs no introduction. While most people know him as former CEO of PDVSA, former Energy Minister, former Venezuela Ambassador to the UN, we know him as the architect of the largest corruption scheme the world has ever seen. Under his watch, PDVSA got close to $1.3 trillion USD worth of income, of which little is left.

*UPDATED 16/03/2020 - Nynas AB is a Venezuelan-Swedish refiner and producer of bitumen and naphtenics. It is currently undergoing a restructuring process overseen by administrators.

Dear ICE,

Saw your news release yesterday about Raul Gorrin, entitled "Venezuelan attorney and businessman added to ICE Most Wanted List for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering."

The sheer amount of #fakenews circulating is staggering. A clueless, ignorant adolescent, being "person of the year" provides just the explanation needed to grasp the sort of intellectual rigour in editorial rooms across the world. Reuters, a news agency that has plagiarised without attribution stuff published here, came yesterday with a totally unsubstantiated piece (based on "two people with knowledge of PDVSA data"), suggesting PDVSA's crude output had jumped 20%. Any person with a subscription to maritime data services can see how crude offtake has increased recently.

SEE UPDATES BELOW | Got a Google alert this morning, about Charles Henry de Beaumont, the mega corrupt French-Swiss banker from Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique involved in multi billion dollar money laundering schemes with Luis and Ignacio Oberto Anselmi, Francisco Convit, Alejandro Betancourt, Danilo Diazgranados, Rafael Ramirez, Victor Aular Blanco, Juan Andres Wallis Brandt, etc. Curiously, when I clicked on the link, to a Miami Herald article, it led to a missing page. It does not matter.