{"id":7983,"date":"2022-11-15T22:28:07","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T03:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7983"},"modified":"2022-11-16T22:28:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T03:28:30","slug":"us-owned-firms-appear-to-help-venezuela-avoid-u-s-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7983","title":{"rendered":"US-Owned Firms Appear to Help Venezuela Avoid U.S. Sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Bullenbaai oil terminal sits along the coast of the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao near Willemstad, Dec. 24, 2016. The terminal is at the center of an effort by Venezuela to get around U.S. sanctions, the Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo\/Dick Drayer)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A company with an office in Houston and another owned by two American citizens appear to be helping Venezuela bypass U.S. sanctions and quietly transport millions in petroleum products aboard an Iranian-built tanker, The Associated Press has learned.<\/p>\n

The sanctions evasion effort is centered around an idled refinery and adjacent oil terminal on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao that until 2019 was a major shipping hub for Venezuela\u2019s state-owned oil company, PDVSA.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 28, the Togo-flagged tanker Colon discharged 600,000 barrels of fuel oil at the Bullenbaai terminal, which is operated by Curacao\u2019s state-owned refining company in partnership with a fledgling company, Caribbean Petroleum Refinery, owned by two Venezuelan American dual nationals.<\/p>\n

The state-owned company issued a news release celebrating the Colon\u2019s arrival as a \u201chistoric moment\u201d \u2014 saying it was the first delivery for the reactivated terminal, which is capable of storing up to 7 million barrels of oil products.<\/p>\n

Although the release made no mention of the fuel oil\u2019s origin, the Iranian-built tanker for the past year has shuttled exclusively among ports in Venezuela. Ship tracking data show that two days prior to its arrival in Curacao, the Colon loaded its giant black-and-red hull at the port of Amuay, home to Venezuela\u2019s largest refinery.<\/p>\n

The little-noticed oil shipment would appear to violate the spirit \u2014 if not strictly the law \u2014 of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that have been aimed unsuccessfully since 2019 at forcing President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro from power.<\/p>\n

With Maduro\u2019s socialist government shunned as a financial pariah in the west, PDVSA has had to resort to ever-more complex transactions to move oil produced from the OPEC nation\u2019s massive petroleum reserves \u2014 the world\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n

But until now, many of those transactions involved deeply discounted payments in cryptocurrencies<\/a> by Russian oligarchs, shell companies in such places as Hong Kong and \u201cghost tankers\u201d<\/a> that turn off their mandatory transponders to avoid detection by U.S. authorities.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Curacao, whose foreign relations are handled by the Netherlands, a staunch U.S. ally, has strictly adhered to U.S. sanctions, once even confiscating PDVSA\u2019s unsold inventories<\/a> after its lease of the refinery expired in 2019 to pay American oil companies stiffed by Venezuela over the years.<\/p>\n

\n

Authorities in Curacao may be betting on lax enforcement by the Biden administration<\/a>, said Marshall Billingslea, a former senior Treasury Department official who helped craft the current sanctions policy. During former President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, the U.S. froze the assets of more than 140 Maduro insiders and threatened retaliation against even non-American companies caught dealing in Venezuela\u2019s crude.<\/p>\n

In contrast, President Joe Biden hasn\u2019t imposed any additional sanctions on Venezuela since taking office and has promised to roll back existing restrictions if Maduro takes meaningful steps toward holding free and fair elections.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey\u2019re flouting the sanctions because they know under this administration there are no consequences,\u201d said Billingslea.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Treasury Department, which enforces sanctions, didn\u2019t respond to an e-mail requesting comment.<\/p>\n

Under U.S. sanctions, Americans and U.S. entities are barred from doing business with Venezuela\u2019s state-owned oil company. That ban becomes harder to enforce, however, the more times an oil cargo changes hands and is blended with other shipments, obscuring PDVSA\u2019s role as the ultimate beneficiary of any international sale.<\/p>\n

Internal PDVSA documents show that the cargo transported by the Colon was sold in September by PDVSA to United Petroleo Corp. Little is known about United, which was registered in Panama last year. But it has emerged as PDVSA\u2019s second biggest client this year, with unpaid invoices for oil products sold on consignment of over $400 million, according to the documents, which someone knowledgeable about the transaction shared with the AP on the condition that the person remain anonymous.<\/p>\n

PDVSA didn\u2019t respond to an e-mail requesting comment.<\/p>\n

The Colon\u2019s cargo was discharged in a storage facility owned by Curacao\u2019s state-owned refinery in partnership with Caribbean Petroleum Refinery.<\/p>\n

Caribbean Petroleum Refinery was registered in Curacao only in June and lists among its directors a Venezuelan American businessman, Raul Herrera. A related holding company bearing a similar name lists as its director Luis Giusti, another dual national who was CEO of PDVSA when Maduro\u2019s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, was elected in 1998.<\/p>\n

When asked whether the shipment originated in Venezuela, Patrick Newton, director of Curacao\u2019s state-owned refinery, said his company is in full compliance with U.S. sanctions and its contracts require that its clients adhere to the same laws.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Herrera said his company\u2019s involvement in the transaction was limited to providing storage to the cargo\u2019s owner, which he identified as Knob Trading SA, a Panama-registered company that lists an office in Houston on its website.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not operating Venezuelan products,\u201d said Herrera, who is also the president of a South Florida loan consulting firm. \u201cWe are not the owners or sellers of this cargo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giusti didn\u2019t respond to text messages and an email seeking comment. Knob Trading didn\u2019t respond to repeated emails seeking comment and a person answering the phone number listed on its website hung up when contacted by the AP.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unknown where the crude went after it arrived in Curacao.<\/p>\n

However, a month later, traders gingerly tried to offload the cargo, marketing it for re-export as 1 million barrels of \u201cBullenbaai Fuel Oil\u201d \u2014 possibly a blend of different grades since Curacao doesn\u2019t produce oil. That\u2019s according to an Oct. 29 certificate of origin purportedly issued by Caribbean Petroleum Refinery. A copy of the certificate was provided to the AP by an oil trader who had been offered the cargo by a broker working with Knob. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being identified with a transaction in violation of U.S. sanctions.<\/p>\n

The certificate was purportedly prepared by Frank Verhoets, who is identified as managing director of Caribbean Petroleum Refinery. However, Herrera said nobody by that name works at the company and called the document, in which Knob\u2019s name is scratched off, a clear fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately in the industry, there\u2019s a lot of falsifications and misleading information,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

– Joshua Goodman, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A company with an office in Houston and another owned by two American citizens appear to be helping Venezuela bypass U.S. sanctions and quietly transport millions in petroleum products aboard an Iranian-built tanker, The Associated Press has learned. The sanctions evasion effort is centered around an idled refinery and adjacent oil terminal on the Dutch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/c8ce8d269a614f1abaa629f5e47730c1\/1000.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"US-Owned Firms Appear to Help Venezuela Avoid U.S. Sanctions","footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-borders-commerce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7985,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7983\/revisions\/7985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}