A judicial process in the United States reveals the efforts of Arias to benefit intermediaries in oil pre-sale contracts. He is now collaborating with justice.

Nilsen Arias; the then Minister Rafael Poveda; Bo Qiliang, manager of Petrochina; Óscar Herrera, from Seguros Sucre, and Xing Zhang, from Andes Petroleum, during a visit to China on April 11, 2013.
The investigations of the US justice system around Nilsen Arias, former International Trade Manager of Petroecuador, reveal and confirm the irregularities derived from the oil pre-sales contracts.
The arrest in the United States of Arias, known as ‘El Gordo’, has exposed the role he played in the negotiation of debt contracts tied to the sale of oil.
The investigation reveals that it was ‘El Gordo’ who coordinated and offered favorable conditions to the oil intermediaries, using his position and the enormous power he enjoyed in Petroecuador.
Arias participated in at least three corruption schemes, which involved the state oil company Petroecuador and eight oil and fuel intermediaries or traders. And he received about $20 million in bribes from these firms.
Oil pre-sale contracts, at the time of Arias, were signed by Petroecuador with five international state-owned companies, located in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
These Ecuadorian oil and fuel oil pre-sale contracts were negotiated directly, without bidding, under the excuse that they were government-to-government agreements.
‘El Gordo’ Arias also exercised authority over contracts for oil derivatives, liquefied gas and asphalt.
To collect the bribes, Arias used shell companies in Singapore, Portugal, Panama, and the United States.
Until now, the name of Arias appeared in different investigations and in an investigation process in the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office. However, the former Petroecuador strongman during the Correismo had not been prosecuted.
The bribery schemes worked, according to US justice, between 2010 and 2021, that is, even after Arias left Petroecuador, in 2017.
The biggest scheme
The first corruption scheme that Arias used to collect bribes used two intermediary companies, based in Panama and the Virgin Islands.
The companies were controlled, in turn, by two unidentified consultants of Ecuadorian-Spanish nationality and relatives of each other.
The descriptions of these two consultants coincide with those of the brothers Antonio and Enrique Peré Ycaza, oil brokers, also prosecuted in the United States.
Both US justice seized more than USD 48 million with a court order, in 2021.
This bribery scheme was launched to collect bribes from four companies:
- An unidentified trading firm, but matching Gunvor, as Raymond Kohut is mentioned as one of his employees.
- A second unidentified trading company, called intermediary 2.
- Vitol, another trading company.
- Sargeant Marine Inc. (SMI), a multinational asphalt marketing and shipping company.
The investigation begins with the Gunvor case. According to the narrative, in 2012, Gunvor signed a contract with two state-owned companies based in Asia, which in turn had oil presale contracts with Ecuador.
The Asian firms that had this type of contract with Petroecuador in 2012 are the Chinese Petrochina, Unipec, and the Thai Petrotailandia or PTT.
The contracts between Gunvor and the Asian companies were to transport and market the oil resulting from the contracts with Ecuador.
That same year, the Peré Ycazas and Kohuts agreed to pay bribes to Arias and other Ecuadorian officials.
With the payment of bribes they sought to ensure that Arias guaranteed beneficial conditions for Gunvor. The advantages that Arias gave them were:
- Direct Petroecuador to sign the contracts with the Asian companies, under “favorable terms” so that Gunvor could, in turn, sign their contracts.
- Give them confidential and private information to secure your business. For example, in April 2016, he sent them an email with the “ideal dates” for them to pick up a shipment of Oriente crude.
To make the scheme work, Gunvor signed bogus consulting contracts with the Peré Ycaza’s two paper companies. But the money to pay for those deals actually came from a commission per barrel that Gunvor or other brokers charged in connection with contracts between Petroecuador and Asian oil companies.
The traders or intermediaries charged the commission for marketing and selling Ecuadorian oil, when it was assumed that the agreements with Asian companies would serve to sell Ecuadorian oil directly and without intermediaries.
In total, USD 70 million in bribes were transferred through this scheme between 2012 and 2019. Of that money, USD 18 million ended up in bank accounts of Arias or his relatives.
The other beneficiaries
The same scheme with companies from Panama and the Virgin Islands worked to pay bribes from three other companies.
The first is from an unidentified trading firm, which is related to a presale agreement between Petroecuador and a state-owned company based in Latin America.
One of the Latin American oil companies with this type of contract was the Uruguayan ANCAP.
As in the case of Gunvor, the intermediary company had a contract with the Latin American state company to transport the Ecuadorian crude from the pre-sale contract. And the intervener set a commission per barrel of the contract.
To pay these bribes to Arias, the Peré Ycaza companies used a paper signature in Uruguay. For this contract, ‘El Gordo’ received USD 146,000.
The second firm is Vitol, another trading or brokerage company.
Vitol had a contract with a state-owned company in the Middle East, which could be Oman Trading. Through the same scheme, but with companies based in Curacao, Arias received USD 800,000.
The last one is SMI, which is not linked to pre-sale contracts but directly to the supply of asphalt. For this contract, through the same scheme as the companies in Panama and the Virgin Islands, Arias received USD 250,000.
The smallest schemes
In 2010, Arias became involved in another bribery scheme that includes a distribution company, a transportation company and a trading company.
These three firms had, directly and indirectly, contracts with another of the Asian companies which, in turn, had pre-sale contracts with Petroecuador.
Through intermediaries, these firms paid USD 818,000 into Arias accounts in Miami.
In 2014, a new corruption scheme was born. Arias agreed to receive new bribes on behalf of two trading companies (commerce). He received about USD 700,000.
‘This makes me very happy’
Arias faces a sentence of more than 10 years in prison for the crime of conspiracy to launder money. However, the sentence could be reduced if he pleads guilty and cooperates with US prosecutors.
In fact, Arias has already been collaborating with the United States justice since January 2022, when he had his first hearing to plead guilty and negotiate a lesser sentence.
An FBI report, which is part of the case documents, cites recorded telephone conversations, with Arias’s consent, with the Peré Ycazas.
In one of these conversations, from April 2020, Arias talks with the two men about the bribes already paid and about bribes pending collection, for USD 1.2 million. “This makes me very happy,” Arias says according to the transcript.
Editor’s note: This article was updated at 1:10 p.m. on October 27, 2022, with the identification of the Ecuadorian-Spaniards as Antonio and Enrique Peré Ycaza, oil brokers. Both were pointed out by Assemblyman Fernando Villavicencio.