A Gunvor Group, unit the world’s largest energy commodity trading firms, will pay $661 million after it admitted to bribing Ecuadorean officials. From 2012 to 2020, Gunvor and co-conspirators paid more than $97 million to intermediaries who would use some of the money for bribes to numerous Ecuadorean officials, according to a statement of facts to which the company admitted. The money was often routed through U.S. banks using shell companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands. The company earned more than $384 million in profits from Petroecuador work that it won through the bribes
Gunvor SA entered a guilty plea Friday to a conspiracy charge in Brooklyn, N.Y., federal court. Prosecutors from the Justice Department said Gunvor paid bribes to officials at Ecuador’s ministry of hydrocarbons and to state-oil company Petroecuador to win contracts to buy oil products. The company was sentenced to pay $374 million in fines and forfeit $287 million in ill-gotten gains, but will receive credit for amounts paid to authorities in Switzerland and Ecuador, prosecutors said.
The Swiss prosecutors said the case involved payouts to that led the state petroleum company Petroecuador to award two oil-related contracts to Gunvor. U.S. authorities said the Geneva commodities trader earned more than $384 million in profits “from the business it corruptly obtained” related to the Ecuadorian oil company.
U.S. authorities said they had previously won convictions in New York of four people who pleaded guilty to money laundering-related charges, including former Gunvor consultants Antonio Pere Ycaza and Enrique Pere Ycaza; former Gunvor employee.
Gunvor was founded decades ago by oil traders Gennady Timchenko of Russia and Torbjörn Törnqvist of Sweden. Timchenko, who is under international sanctions in connection with Russia’s war in Ukraine, divested his holdings in the firm and sold his shares to Törnqvist in 2014 as it appeared sanctions would be imposed against him.
Jeffrey Newman is a whistleblower lawyer whose firm represents whistleblowers in healthcare fraud under the False Claims Act (FCA) also whistleblower claims brought under the SEC whistleblower program for violations of securities regulations including insider trading cases. He also handles cases involving evasion of US sanctions against China, Iran and Russia and other sanctioned entities and he can be reached at Jeff@JeffNewmanLaw.com or at 617-823-3217
