(Bloomberg) -- The US arrested a Turkish national on suspicion of conspiring to violate sanctions on Venezuela oil trading in a scheme to benefit the country’s state energy company, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
US officials arrested Taskin Torlak, 37, in Miami on November 2 when he was attempting to fly to his home country. Torlak “allegedly conspired to illegally sell Venezuelan oil, using deceit and trickery to hide the fact that this oil originated from Venezuela,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves for the District of Columbia.
He is charged with one count of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Torlak is alleged to have led a complex scheme since about November 2020 to sell oil and and petroleum products from Venezuela and Iran by renaming vessels, including covering the tankers’ names with paint or blankets, according to the statement. He’s also accused of turning off vessels’ electronic location tracking devices.
Working with co-conspirators, Torlak allegedly received tens of millions of dollars from Venezuela’s state-owned company, Petroleos de Venezuela, to transport oil and hid beneficiaries of sales from US officials, agencies and commercial maritime companies, the statement said. The transactions violate oil sanctions imposed on PDVSA in 2019 by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
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