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Business Crimes BulletinColumns & DepartmentsLitigationWhite Collar Crime

In the Courts

By Colleen Snow
September 01, 2018

Business Executive Arrested and Charged with Bribing Venezuelan Officials  

Jose Manuel Gonzalez Testino (Gonzalez), charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and paying bribes to a foreign official in violation of the FCPA, was arrested on Aug. 1, 2018, in the Miami International Airport. Upon his arrest, Gonzalez appeared before a U.S. Magistrate Judge of the Southern District of Florida. Gonzalez, who holds both U.S. and Venezuelan citizenship, is an alleged co-conspirator in a scheme to bribe officials within Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. The criminal complaint, recently unsealed and filed in the Southern District of Texas (U.S. v. Gonzalez, No. 18-1203), alleges that Gonzalez paid at least $629,000 in bribes between 2012 and 2013 to a former PDVSA official. While the PDVSA official is not named in court documents, he is described as the procurement department general manager at a PDVSA subsidiary (Bariven SA), who previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money. In exchange for these funds, numerous energy companies owned by Gonzalez allegedly received PDVSA contracts awarded in U.S. dollars (rather than Venezuelan bolivars, with priority payments over other vendors on those contracts).

Gonzalez's recent arrest is part of a broader U.S. government investigation into PDVSA bribery, which was first publicized in December 2015. According to the Department of Justice, to date, 17 individuals have been charged in the U.S., with 12 pleading guilty.

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