The contract may be summarized as follows: Sonatrach will give its name to the shipments of Baha Bassatne, who buys fuel from the Swiss company Vitol, for 3.5 dollars per metric ton, while he makes 25 dollars as profit in his deals with the end customer in Lebanon. BB Energy, a leading global independent energy trading company, is pleased to announce that it has successfully refinanced and expanded a$580 millionsenior secured borrowing base credit facility (the Facility). Peter Quinter, an expert on U.S. embargo laws and former head of the International Law section of the Florida Bar Association, said the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba generally bars a company with a U.S. presence from doing business with Cuba directly or indirectly through an offshore branch, for example. BB Energy bought oil on the day prices turned negative. The company said it saved Ghana over $2.8million when it sold the crude to the firm at a discount of $2 instead of the normal $5 a barrel. In my eyes, we should not expect any verdict before 2022, the lawyer said. Hayes declared his role at the oil. Public debt could rise to 289% of GDP by the end of the century if climate change is left unchecked, it said. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Every time something was purchased in dollars, it could not be done because the Cuban checks in dollars were automatically canceled because the dollars belong to the U.S. Federal Reserve, the source said. Landlords are eligible for up 5,000 to cover two thirds of energy efficiency work. Starmer even chose last week to announce that Labour was no longer in favour of abolishing the House of Lords. Sir John's earnings put him among the most well paid MPs. Formed in the 1960s, the group's activities span six continents. This was in addition to his 49,140 directors salary. During his time as energy minister, Hayes caused controversy by refusing to support any further expansion to onshore wind power, describing wind turbines as a terrible intrusion. Tainted fuel scandal: 22 people and entities to stand trial. With approximately 24 million metric tonnes of physical crude oil, petroleum products and gas traded annually, BBE is one of the most active gas-oil, gasoline, fuel oil and bitumen traders. However, the criminal court announced his innocence to the Algeria Judicial Council, which was concerned with the ongoing investigations in the second Sonatrach case. Baha Bassatne remained the sole Sonatrach broker until Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour was appointed general manager of the company and imposed another intermediary. Like the extractives sector, the renewables industry requires substantial capital investments, which can come with substantial risks of . There have been unconfirmed reports that Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja divorced Deborah Castro Espin in recent years, but he remains in charge of Grupo de Administracin Empresarial S.A., (GAESA) and the governments signature port of Mariel development project. All rights reserved. Regardless of whether payments flowed directly to PDVSA or remained in Russia to pay down debt, the proposed approach appears to present no violation of sanctions by any of the entities because no U.S. citizens, currency, companies or financial institutions seem to be involved, according to four sanctions experts consulted by Reuters. The London branch of the Algerian Sonatrach published a statement through the Algerian News Agency, saying that whoever was presented by the media as an employee of Sonatrach is not, in fact, an employee in the company, but an independent marine agent who monitors shipments in Lebanon for the benefit of the companys branch in London. The Algerian company tried to imply that the issue is limited to the technical specifications of the fuel. Security agencies have warned against gangs attempting to kidnap unaccompanied children. Patersons lobbying interests extended to sausage company Lynns Country Foods who paid him 12,000 for just 24 hours of work each year. Translation by Joelle El Khoury. John Hayes earns 50,000 per year as a strategic advisor for BB Energy, a major trader in crude oil and other petrochemical products. Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen in Caracas, Nidhi Verma in New Delhi, Julia Payne in London; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Simon Webb,David Gaffen and Marguerita Choy. This means you can get up to 7,500 worth of measures installed for a maximum contribution of 2,500. Rosneft, which has heavily invested in Venezuela under President Vladimir Putin, did not respond to a request for a comment before Reuters published its story on Thursday. This means that the judiciary has ruled pro forma for now. The case dates back to March 2020, when EDL reported to the judiciary that it had received a shipment of poor-quality fuel, even though the results of tests conducted at the port of exit and upon the fuels arrival at the Beirut port showed the opposite. Khalid Mahmood (Labour) has committed up to 15 hours a month advising the Policy Exchange think tank on issues including extremism. El Nuevo Herald identified at least 25 companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the Bahamas and linked to Cuba. Tory whips threatened MPs with the loss of local funding unless they fell into line. This entire case rests on false assumptions backed up by entirely fabricated charges. Sonatrach has been involved in at least two major corruption cases in the past decade, both of which involved the payment of bribes to company employees and officials. BB Naft does not appear, however, among the subsidiaries listed on BB Energys Web site. ZR Energy DMCC was not aware of any deficiency and relied on the representations of independent and internationally recognised third-party testers who certified that it was on specification when ZR Energy DMCC handled the cargo, a representative of ZR Energy DMCC said. An accountant for the British company All Worlds Food Ltd, Jose Da Silva, answered: I do not know the reasons why the documents were certified by a Swiss notary. Yes! This is an actual Pandoras box that goes far beyond the chapter currently in the hands of the judiciary, he said. Read about our approach to external linking. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. : . Then Paterson resigned, cancelling future parliamentary votes. Rosneft would also make a profit by receiving an intermediation fee, the source and an internal PDVSA document said. MP and former Tory energy minister John Hayes has been paid 150,000 by oil firm BB Energy over three years. After they didn't show up for questioning, reports suggested Hleiss and Rahme were being protected by Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh. They also considered that the profit margin of the company (3.5 USD) was fair, as the company is not charged with any liabilities. It is worth noting here that Daraj previously investigated suspicious money transactions through Lebanese banks, for Nassim Ould Kaddour, the son of Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour, based on Panama Papers (First National Bank and Socit gnrale de banque au Liban). The Panama Papers, documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with the McClatchy Washington Bureau, Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, among others, contain hundreds of thousands of pages from the files of Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm with offices in 33 other countries. Public documents show for example that Vitol and Glencore have used intermediaries to funnel over US$31 million in bribes to corrupt Petrobras employees in the past so that they may win big contracts, along with acquiring other benefits. In 1963 they entered the oil sector in Lebanon and were primarily involved in local marketing of oil products and importation of Bitumen. Little is known inside the island about the Cuban governments companies abroad, but Havana economist Omar Everleny wrote in the early 2000s that there were more than 100 entities with the participation of Cuban capital, founded as mixed [state-private] companies or as branches of companies based on the island operating abroad in areas such as construction, agriculture, food, medicine, mining, finance and science., Everleny, recently fired from the University of Havanas Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, noted the paradox that a country that lacks the capital for its own development has invested in other countries. The motive, he speculated, is the U.S. embargo that forced the establishment of a network of companies around the world to warehouse and market products from the sea, among them lobsters and shrimp., Today the export of products from the fishing industry is carried out through those companies, he said, adding that Cuban officials also created an international network of companies to warehouse and sell the famous Cuban cigars.. As Lebanon endures worsening blackouts and fuel shortages, BBC Arabic investigates the disastrous state of the country's electricity sector. The Panama Papers show Dupont-Willemin as a director of a total of 49 offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, five in Panama and two each in the Bahamas and Seychelles islands. The U.S. Treasury Department declined to respond to a request for comment. Sonatrach signed the contract while Ali ibn-Buzeid was the manager of the London branch, and Muhammad Shawki Rahhal was the marketing manager, who had been accused in the first Sonatrach lawsuit. It held all the shares of Euro Foods Ltd., which was registered in the Bahamas and in turn represented ALIMPORT. Much of the Mossack Fonseca correspondence on those companies involves updates of company registries and boards of directors, payment of fees and requests for letters of financial status required to open bank accounts or sign contracts. Potential forms of corruption include bribery, theft, collusion and bid-rigging. the Home Energy and Conservation Act (HECA) report in Appendix 1. The new certificates, for 800 shares, were to be issued in the names of 10 members of the Bassatne family, including 160 shares for Riad Bassatne. The proposed payment mechanism is the latest sign of the growing proximity of Venezuelas cash-strapped government to Russia as the United States tightens a financial noose around Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who it describes as a dictator. This story was originally published June 7, 2016, 10:06 AM. Which groups shape the stories we see in the press; which voices are silenced, and why? Following the publication of Reuters report on Thursday, Reliance said in its statement that it had purchased Venezuelan crude oil from Rosneft long before the imposition of U.S. sanctions on PDVSA in January, as the Russian company received oil in return for a reduction in Venezuelas debt. Steve Goodrich, research manager at Transparency International, said the number of MPs who accepted visits to Azerbaijan - a petrostate with a big corruption and human rights problem - was. If youre rich and want a place of power in politics, donate 3 million to the Conservative Party and youre likely to gain a peerage. The PDVSA source said the agreement had received the consent of all three parties and was being executed. Zaouk is connected to Rahmeh, however, through another company, ZR Energy SAL Offshore, of which Rahmeh is a majority stakeholder and which, along with Zaouk, has a share in ownership of the Lebanese firm Domaz Holding. A zero tolerance approach to any deviance from such requirement is adopted throughout the group. They include Petrobras, Vitol, and Glencore Limited. The Venezuelan companys shipping schedules showed that Reliance was loading a cargo from PDVSA as recently as April 20. Last month, he also joined calls from Tory MPs to allow shale fracking to resume in the UK. They escaped after senior adviser Dominic Cummings showed there was one law for the rich and another for the rest. What's more, one of the Algerian state-owned energy firm's subsidiaries has found itself in the crosshairs of a Lebanese court. Still, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces sanctions, has given no indications it would take that route. One Bloomberg report showed BB Energy had $10 billion in revenues in 2012. From the beginning of the pandemic, Labour leader Keir Starmer spent nearly all his time agreeing with Boris Johnson in a show of national unity. This was on top of his standard MP salary of nearly 82,000. Independent MP Paula Yacoubian told LOGI that she believed Lebanese and Algerian mafias were involved in a corruption scheme tied to the fuel imports. Corruption takes many forms, ranging from grand corruption - the capture of high office of government by elites and the uses of these offices for private gain - to "petty" corruption - the use of bribes or other The report claims peerages appeared to be a reward to thank wealthy donors for funding the Tory party. The UK energy industry is facing a wave of bankruptcies amid a gas supply crunch that has sent electricity prices soaring, leaving suppliers vulnerable . The offer letter, seen by Reuters with its date redacted, said that Rosneft had agreed with PDVSA to pay BB Energys $26 million debt to the Venezuelan state oil company and then to seek payment from BB Energy via a bank transfer or an equivalent oil cargo. Since the Tories takeover of parliament in 2010, nine of the partys former treasurerswho donated huge amountswere given a position as a Lord. This was on top of his standard MP salary of nearly 82,000. They usually resort to those intermediaries when entering new markets that are unfamiliar to them, in order to benefit from their status inside this market, which they have done in several Asian countries before building direct relationships with the clients. LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - Oil trading firm BB Energy has hired Jacques Erni as its new chief financial officer (CFO) starting Aug. 2 based in Dubai, the company said. The Lebanese judiciary expanded investigation into the fuel import file, and considered that the Algerian company charges commissions just because it is a front for the actual fuel supplier. It showed that fuel was of acceptable quality, when another test showed it was not. Our experienced traders are situated in our offices throughout the globe; industry specialists who count gas, crude oil, light and middle distillates, as well as bitumen, as their specialities. How the 61-year-old embargo is blocking Cubans from finding sponsors in the U.S. With challenges consistently facing the energy industry, we are constantly evolving, using advanced systems, procedures and processes to provide the best answers for our clients. Stakeholders in renewable energy value chains include not only manufacturers, suppliers and users but also government agencies, financial institutions and private technology companies, as well as informal local networks. Companies with Cuban capital or activities on the island. Aguilar also has served as a deputy in the legislative National Assembly. They have addresses in the Miramar and Old Havana neighborhoods of the Cuban capital. Sonatrach has been involved in at least two major corruption cases in the past decade, both of which involved the payment of bribes to company employees and officials. Hayes declared his role at the oil traders, and there is no evidence that rules have been broken. However, Reuters was unable to independently verify if the agreement was implemented and remains in force. SECURITYIn Tunis, Mawlawi reassures Saudi counterpart on Lebanons continuing fight against drug trafficking, DIPLOMACY Belgium PM tells Iranian leader to free aid worker, PRIVACY Moroccan activists join WhatsApp suit over Pegasus spyware, Support L'Orient Today with a digital subscription starting $1. Link to this Report. Surprisingly, the contract, long presented as a state-to-state agreement, was in fact signed with Sonatrachs offshore subsidiary, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands. BBC Arabic's Moe Chreif tells us about the biggest corruption investigation in the history of Lebanons energy sector, which resulted in allegations involving multi-million dollar agreements, bribery, and shipments of substandard oil. Private landlords and housing associations may apply for a grant on behalf of tenants who meet the eligibility criteria. . 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