2024-03-28 14:27:01
According to Swiss authorities, the Gunvor company paid bribes worth USD 7.5 million to a Petroecuador official. Ecuador’s Prosecutor’s Office spoke out.
The Geneva-based energy trading firm Gunvor was sentenced, this Friday, March 1, by the Swiss Attorney General’s Office to pay 86.7 million francs ($90 million) for acts of corruption in Ecuador, it said. an official statement from the Swiss Government.
The public ministry had opened an investigation into the Geneva firm in 2021, in relation to another case opened in the United States with the same protagonists, also concluded this Friday with an agreement between Gunvor and the American judicial authorities. The ruling made public this Friday in Switzerland determines that Gunvor is criminally responsible for active corruption of foreign public officials, and indicates that the company has chosen not to appeal the sanction.
According to Swiss investigations, between February 2013 and the same month of 2017, a former Gunvor employee with the help of two intermediaries through an offshore company paid bribes worth USD 7.5 million in favor of an Ecuadorian official who occupied a executive position at Petroecuador. In exchange for these payments, the Ecuadorian firm awarded contracts to two companies connected to Gunvor, according to the official statement.
In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office of Ecuador mentioned that “this conviction occurs in the context of the case in which Nilsen Arias, former foreign trade manager of Petroecuador, was sentenced – also in the United States – through the exchange of information.” .
He recalled that in the country, several former Petroecuador officials, as well as the Gunvor company in Ecuador (and its international representative) face a criminal process – called the Alianza case – for the crime of bribery.
From now on, he pointed out, it is up to the State Attorney General’s Office to begin the process of recovering these funds, for which the country has a period of one year.
Fuente: FIRST TIMES