Venezuelan Oil Company Official Enters Guilty Plea In Miami

MIAMI, FL — A former executive director at Venezuela's state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., pleaded guilty in Miami Wednesday to his role in a billion-dollar, money-laundering scheme.

Fifty-one-year-old Abraham Edgardo Ortega of Venezuela pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to federal prosecutors. Ortega was the company's executive director of financial planning,

U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan of Miami announced the guilty plea along with Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Special Agent in Charge Mark Selby of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations Miami Field Office.

Subscribe to Miami Patch's free email news alerts and newsletters

"As part of his plea, Ortega admitted that in his position with PDVSA, he accepted $5 million in bribes to give priority loan status to a French company and a Russian bank, which were both minority shareholders in joint ventures with PDVSA," according to federal prosecutors. "Ortega was paid for this bribery scheme with the proceeds of a currency exchange scheme, through which $1.2 billion was embezzled, through bribery and fraud from PDVSA."

Ortega is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who also accepted the guilty plea.

"Ortega admitted that he worked with a co-defendant to launder $12 million that he received as bribe payments," prosecutors added. "Ortega admitted that he and his co-defendant laundered $12 million through a sophisticated false-investment scheme that received money from a payment made to look like an investment into a fund, but, in fact, the payment was actually laundered out of the fund."

Prosecutors said that the scheme also included complicit money managers, brokerage firms, banks and real estate investment firms in the United States and elsewhere.

In addition to Ortega, federal officials have also charged other former company officials, third-party money launders and members of the Venezuelan elite, sometimes known as “boliburgués.”

The investigation was conducted by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force’s “Operation Money Flight,” a partnership among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Photo by Paul Scicchitano