Florida asphalt shipping company Sargeant Marine has pled guilty to a multi-year, multi-country $38m bribery scheme, following admissions from several executives.
The company agreed to pay a $16m on Tuesday under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) after being accused of paying off officials in Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela to secure deals with their state oil companies.
"The FBI is dedicated to rooting corruption out of our market, keeping the United States fair for vendors and consumers alike," FBI assistant director Calvin Shivers said in a statement.
"Sargeant Marine, Inc. attempted to get ahead of competitors by paying bribes to foreign officials in violation of the [FCPA]. As today's guilty pleas demonstrate, the FBI will relentlessly investigate those attempting to cheat the market, and we will bring them to justice."
According to the Department of Justice, Sargeant Marine began bribing Brazilian officials in 2010 after an unnamed senior executive traveled to the country to find an intermediary with government connections.
Once found, the company began creating fake consulting contracts and invoices and using cash payments and wire transfers from the US to offshore banks to help it secure contracts with Petrobras.
After a shipment to Brazil, an executive with a Sargeant Marine affiliate emailed executive Daniel Sargeant saying that the "last Brazil trip with the crooks paid off".
In Venezuela, Sargeant Marine had been blacklisted by state-run oil company PDVSA, but again used fake consulting contracts and invoices to conceal bribes that saw asphalt sold to a Swiss intermediary, then to Sargeant Marine at a slight premium.
The bribes began in 2012 and were paid until 2018.
In Ecuador, the company paid a Petroecuador official in the same manner to secure a contract to sell the company asphalt.
The Brazilian scheme earned Sargeant Marine $26.5m, the Venezuelan scheme $8.2m and $3.2m in Ecuador.
The guilty plea came in the US federal court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.
The plea follows the 2017 guilty pleas of Sergeant Marine intermediary Luiz Eduardo Andrade under the FCPA and trader Roberto Finocchi for a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In 2018, a second intermediary, David Diaz, and trader Jose Tomas Meneses both pleaded guilty to FCPA violations. In 2019, Sargeant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the FCPA and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The five await sentencing.
Beginning in 2016, Sargeant Marine ran a joint asphalt tanker joint venture with Dutch commodities trader Vitol called VALT.
In December 2019, Vitol bought Sargeant Marine out of its stake, folding VALT into Vitols asphalt trading business.
Financial details of the move were not disclosed.
