The Vitol company, which buys fuel from Petroecuador, used the structure of a paper company that carried out operations to disguise the payment of bribes to two Petroecuadorian officials.

It fall of Nilsen Ariasformer Petroecuador International Trade Manager, at least connected to six more cases investigated by US courts. These processes reveal the operation of structures for payment of bribes, of which the former Ecuadorian official is the beneficiary.

The main case against Arias was built around Gunvor, the trading company that would pay him an estimated $18 million bribe. Other major “cuts” he got were related to other trading companies doing business with Petroecuador: Vitol.

Vitol made a network of companies based in Curaao for payment of bribes to officials from Venezuela, Mexico and Ecuador. For business with Petroecuador, he made payments to two people:

• A senior Petroecuador official who worked between 2010 and 2017, whose description fits Nilsen Arias.
• An unidentified senior official who held various positions in the Ministry of Hydrocarbons, worked between 2013 and 2016.

Because of this network of corruption, Vitol received a $135 million fine. Javier Aguilar, his operator in Houston, Texas, was charged with money laundering and pleaded not guilty.

Vitol and the state oil company Oman Oil Co. formed Oman Trading International (OTI). The company signed a contract with Petroecuador for purchase of fuel for 30 months.

Unemployed Dutch

The case against Dutchman Lionel Hanst provides a clue as to how Vitol laid out the structure for the payment of bribesof which Nilsen Arias is one of the beneficiaries.

According to the information contained in the five processes that took place in the United States, at the end of 2014, Hanst is looking for a job as a regional broker at Vitol. For this reason, he met Javier Aguilar, who worked for his subsidiary in Houston.

Aguilar told him that, although he couldn’t get him a job as a broker, he could offer him another position: that working from Curaçao overseeing other brokers in the region on Vitol’s behalf. Hanst will be in charge of make payments ordered by the company.

For this, Hanst created two paper companies in Curaçao: Lionel Oil and Zanza Oil.

In order to hide the relationship between Vitol and the paper company, they signed fake intermediary agreements and exchange of raw materials. Hanst even periodically sends out fake invoices to disguise payments for services that were never rendered.

Lionel Oil and Zanza Oil also signed consulting contracts with at least two companies (in Panama and the Virgin Islands) related to two unidentified Ecuadorian-Spanish individuals, who will Antonio and Enrique Pere Ycazaoil broker.

Enrique Peré appeared in the Panama Papers, to be precise, with a company in the Virgin Islands, called Larimar Capital Assets Inc..

Pere Ycaza . Business

In 2015, Arias and an unnamed Ecuadorian official introduced Peré Ycazas to Vitol’s Javier Aguilar. In that year, the five agreed to work together for Vitol’s benefit.

Arias, Aguilar and Peré Ycazas teamed up for a fuel oil contract, which closed on December 6, 2016. It was pre-sale contractin exchange for a loan of USD 300 million.

Vitol needs contacts in Petroecuador to secure his business. According to the investigation, Arias directed the Ecuadorian state company to close the contract with the ILO and provide confidential information for your benefit.

In exchange for his help, Vitol agreed to pay commission 25 cents per barrel fuel oil contract with OIT. This commission will be paid to Peré Ycaza’s two companies, which will use part of the money to pay Arias and other Ecuadorian officials.

The disbursement will be made through the Curaao company. For this, they signed a consulting contract on 22 December 2016, namely, two weeks later from signing fuel pre-sale contracts.

The money moves like this:

• Vitol made payments from his UK account to the Curaçao accounts of Lionel Oil and Zanza Oil.
• Hanst transferred money from the Curaçao company to accounts in the Cayman Islands and Curaçao in the name of the Peré Ycaza company.
• From this account, part of the commission was transferred to the accounts of Nielsen Arias and his family.

According to the investigation of Arias, he received approx bribe USD 800,000 from Vitol.

pending commission

Although Nilsen Arias left Petroecuador in 2017, there is a pending payment for him and for other officials assisting in contracts with Vitol. In fact, in July 2018, he received a transfer of USD 225,000.

Recorded phone calls and meetings between Javier Aguilar and Peré Ycaza talk about this pending commissions charged for their work until 2020shortly before the Vitol scandal.

According to the investigation, in August 2019 invoices were temporarily suspended, which caused payments to Peré Ycaza to start piling up.

In a phone call in February 2020, Peré Ycazas Aguilar claims for this pending payment.

– “This is a commitment… I mean, I handle it. This will do. I have to speed things up so that there are no more problems,” Aguilar believes.

On the same day of the telephone conversation, one of Peré Ycaza sent Aguilar a spreadsheet in which he indicated that they owed more than $2.5 million in commission, for more than 17 million barrels of fuel oil that Petroecuador sent to Vitol.

A few days later, in a new telephone conversation, Aguilar said he had requested that the matter be resolved quickly.

– “I told them: we owe them a lot; I have to give them token of appreciation… I want you to send me, at this point, 250″.

A few days after this conversation, Aguilar ordered two transfers of USD 75,550 and USD 62,664 to Peré Ycaza’s corporate account.

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