Federal prosecutors in Miami have charged a Venezuelan businessman with paying hefty bribes to a relative of President Nicolás Maduro in a scheme to obtain inflated, multimillion-dollar contracts from a joint venture involving Venezuela's state-owned oil company and Chevron U.S.A., Inc.
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Rixon Rafael Moreno Oropeza, 46, was indicted on charges of conspiring to divert millions of dollars from his contract dealings with a company called Petropiar into Miami bank accounts, real estate, a private jet and luxury vehicles.
Chevron is engaged in the joint venture with Petropiar, a subsidiary of Venezuela's national oil company, PDVSA, but there is no indication in the charges that the major U.S. oil firm was aware of Moreno's alleged bribery scheme. Chevron, with headquarters in California, issued a general statement Thursday that didn't address the federal case against Moreno.
"In Venezuela, Chevron affiliates participate in joint ventures with PDVSA, who is the majority shareholder and the primary operator. Petropiar is a joint venture with PDVSA in which a Chevron affiliate holds a 30 percent minority interest," the company said. It added that despite U.S. sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Chevron has permission from the U.S. government to do some business with PDVSA.
Moreno, who has not been arrested and is believed to be living in Venezuela, is the latest of dozens of politically connected Venezuelans and other business elites charged with corrupt dealings with the government's oil company, PDVSA, which has been at the center of U.S. money laundering cases extending from Miami to Houston to New York.
The Moreno probe grew out of an investigation of Venezuelan businessman Naman Wakil, who was arrested in Miami last year on money-laundering charges accusing him of paying huge bribes to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in food and oil contracts from the Venezuelan government. Wakil, who owns a luxury home in the Coconut Grove area of Miami, was released on a $50 million bond. He has pleaded not guilty.
Moreno is accused of paying bribes to senior officials at Petropiar, according to an indictment returned by the Miami federal grand jury Wednesday. In particular, Moreno allegedly paid a $1 million bribe to a senior official in the Venezuelan government - who law enforcement sources say is a relative of President Maduro's - to install another executive as a high-ranking official in the procurement division of Petropiar.
Underscoring the money-laundering charges, Moreno is accused of sending millions of dollars in bribery payments to senior Petropiar officials from bank accounts that he controlled in Miami, according to the indictment. In exchange for these bribes, he received more than $30 million in contract payments from Petropiar at his bank accounts in Miami, the indictment says.
Amount the allegedly inflated deals struck between 2015 and 2019: Moreno received about $2.7 million from one Petropiar contract for breathing devices - a price that was 100 times the cost, according to the indictment filed by federal prosecutors Michael Berger and Alexander Kramer. Moreno allegedly used the tainted proceeds for his own personal benefit, they said.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years on money laundering charges and up to 10 years on other offenses.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS criminal division in South Florida.
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