Vitol Inc. deferred prosecution agreement over Latin American bribery (2020)

The DOJ deferred prosecution agreement

DOJ said Vitol Inc. entered the deferred prosecution agreement in connection with a criminal information filed in the Eastern District of New York charging two counts of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA ¹. The EDNY release says the case is assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano ².

Vitol agreed to a combined total criminal penalty of US$135 million covering the US and Brazil ². DOJ said it will credit US$45 million, about one-third of the total, against the amount Vitol pays to Brazil's Ministério Público Federal ^1,2. Vitol and Vitol S.A. agreed to keep cooperating with DOJ in ongoing investigations and prosecutions, to strengthen their compliance programs, and to report to DOJ on putting those programs in place ¹.

The DOJ and EDNY releases do not state the length of the DPA term or name an independent compliance monitor ^1,2. They do not describe any voluntary self-disclosure credit ¹.

Conduct described by DOJ

DOJ said that, according to the company's admissions and court documents, between 2005 and 2014 Vitol and its co-conspirators paid over US$8 million in bribes to at least four Petrobras officials in exchange for confidential pricing and competitor information ¹. DOJ said the payments were routed through intermediaries and a fictitious company ¹.

DOJ said Vitol admitted that from 2011 to 2014 it bribed at least five other Petrobras officials to win fuel oil contracts ¹. It said Vitol admitted a second conspiracy, in which it offered and paid more than US$2 million in bribes to officials in Ecuador and Mexico from 2015 to July 2020, using sham consulting agreements, shell companies, false invoices and alias email accounts ^1,2.

The CFTC resolution

DOJ described the case as its first coordinated FCPA resolution with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ¹. Vitol agreed to disgorge more than US$12.7 million to the CFTC and to pay a US$16 million penalty for trading activity not covered by the DPA ^1,2. This page does not cite the CFTC order itself.

Related individual cases

The EDNY release says former Petrobras official Rodrigo Berkowitz pleaded guilty on 8 February 2019 to conspiracy to commit money laundering, and intermediary Luiz Eduardo Andrade pleaded guilty on 22 September 2017 to conspiracy to violate the FCPA ². It says a grand jury indicted Vitol trader Javier Aguilar on 22 September 2020 over the Ecuador scheme ².

On 23 February 2024 DOJ said a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Aguilar of conspiracy to violate the FCPA, violating the FCPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering ³. That release identifies the bribe recipients as officials of Petroecuador and of PEMEX Procurement International, a PEMEX subsidiary ³. It says Aguilar worked as a trader in Vitol Inc.'s Houston office from 2015 to 2020 ³. Sentence had not been imposed at the time of the release ³.

Foreign proceedings

DOJ names Brazil's Ministério Público Federal as the authority whose payment is credited against the US penalty ¹. The DOJ releases do not describe any Ecuadorean or Mexican resolution with Vitol ^1,2. This page has not confirmed the terms of the Brazilian agreement, or any Ecuadorean or Mexican proceeding, from an official source in those countries.