(Reuters) -A Venezuelan man has been indicted for allegedly laundering the proceeds of inflated procurement contracts obtained via millions of dollars in bribes to officials at Venezuelan oil venture Petropiar, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
Rixon Moreno, 46, allegedly received benefits including over $30 million in payments on contracts from Petropiar to accounts in South Florida and paid millions of dollars in bribes to senior Petropiar officials, the Justice Department said in a statement.
“Illustrative of this, Moreno received approximately $2.7 million from a Petropiar contract to supply breathing devices, a contract whose price had been allegedly inflated to 100 times the actual cost,” the statement said.
Moreno agreed to pay a $1 million bribe to a Venezuelan state official to install another person as a high-ranking official in Petropiar’s procurement department, according to the statement.
A federal grand jury in Miami returned an indictment charging Moreno with crimes including conspiracy to commit money laundering, concealment money laundering, and engaging in transactions involving criminally derived property.
Petropiar is a joint venture between Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA and U.S. oil company Chevron Corp.
PDVSA did not answer an email seeking comment.
Chevron, in a response to a request for comment, did not specifically address the charges against Moreno, but noted that PDVSA is the primary operator of the Venezuela joint ventures it participates in.
Chevron added that the U.S. government allows it to carry out certain activities in Venezuela despite sanctions that have effectively blocked American corporations from involvement in Venezuela’s oil industry.
(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; editing by Richard Pullin and Leslie Adler)