The Attorney General of the Republic, Tarek William Saab, reported on Tuesday on a new case of corruption in the oil industry, related to irregular hiring conducted in 2012 by the joint venture Petrowarao.
For this case, were deprived from freedom Alimir Osorio, Finance Manager; Yraima López, Hiring Administrator; Noel Ávila, Superintendent of Operations, and Freddy Márquez, Maintenance Superintendent: «These people are charged with the crimes of self-malicious embezzlement; Evasion of bidding processes and association «.
He explained that this case of corruption has to do with the hiring of the «Turbinas y Mecánica, CA» (Turbimeca), Energy International, GE Energy Parts and Energy Controls Solutions companies, which produced an estimated US $ 9 million in damages to the country.
He added that the hiring of these 4 companies was carried out so that they will execute the maintenance of the turbo generator No. 1 of the Pedernales field: «In the process the internal controls and procedures were violated when awarded directly and without approval of the board of directors», he said.
«However, it was determined that during the 2009-2015 period preventive maintenances were not made to the turbo generator No. 1, which prevented the timely detection of faults. Such situation caused the shutdown of the electricity generation service for 235 days, almost a year, affecting the communities neighboring the Pedernales field and the production of the joint venture», he emphasized.
He remarked that the aforementioned hiring was completed by a mixed payment of 5 million dollars and 27,380,000 bolivars, which is equivalent to 4,300,000 dollars at the official rate. He also reported that advances were also issued to international companies GE Energy Parts and Energy Control Solutions for 4,100,000 dollars and 750,000 dollars, respectively.
«These payments were not contemplated in the contract, nor were they registered in the SAP system, they were manually made to a particular account through accounting documents, obviating the established procedures», said the prosecutor.
Finally, he announced that in those cases there are a total of 100 detainees, 8 convicted and most of the accused are in the process of conviction, on the other hand said that «they are investigating three new parallel corruption plots, which will be announced , which have a similar modus operandi, «he said.
