The trial is a step in the right direction, he said. At the time of renewal of the contracts related to supplying the Lebanese market in December 2018, ZR Energy, owned by Teddy and Rimon Rahma, took a share of it for 3.75 USD/metric ton for Sonatrach, the thing which Tarek Fawal insisted on denying in his interview to the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar. Translation by Joelle El Khoury. The latter said in a televised address that he discouraged Hleiss, one of his childhood friends, from going to the court. 11:07 AM | 31 Jan, 2023 . Starting in the early 1990s, Cubas Ministry of Foreign Trade, through the Compaa Panamericana S.A, used Mossack Fonseca to create a string of disguised companies in Panama, the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands that bought and sold medicines, cigars and food. You can unsubscribe at any time*. Tory MP Owen Paterson announced his resignation last week following revelations of his shameless lobbying for big businesses. Glencore has installed independent legal monitors to oversee its internal conduct as part of an agreement with the US government, marking a key milestone in the Swiss-based commodities house's . Registered in: Panama Linked countries: Cuba Agent: Mossack Fonseca Search in: The Panama Papers data is current through 2015 read more Incorporated: 21-DEC-1984 Status: Active Connections: Linkurious and Neo4j Officer (3) Intermediary (1) Explore more from Panama Papers Mossack Fonseca The players He added that in 1996 there was agreement on a triangular Russia/Cuba/Naft Trading S.A. deal to deliver Russian fuel to other markets for a number of tens of millions of US$.. Wars, natural disasters and economic downturns have historically exposed children to the danger of trafficking and illegal adoption. October 19, 2018, 15:03 IST DUBAI: Trading company BB Energy has raised a $245 million revolving credit facility to refinance existing credit and for general corporate purposes, it said on Thursday. Russia has publicly said the U.S. sanctions are illegal and it would work with Venezuela to weather them. Last month he and other Tory MPs called for fracking to resume. The family controls BB Energy, a conglomerate founded in Lebanon in 1937 that buys and sells 16 million metric tons of crude and derivatives each year. Digital Subscription $1,909 Premium Subscription $3,179 Best Value All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. This means you can get up to 7,500 worth of measures installed for a maximum contribution of 2,500. However, the dates for the first court hearings, which will be open to the public, have yet to be announced. BB Energy registered a company in Texas, BB Energy USA LLC., in 2014. Like the extractives sector, the renewables industry requires substantial capital investments, which can come with substantial risks of . Forgery, using counterfeit documents, bribery, fraud and professional misconduct these are the charges brought against 22 people and entities following a pretrial investigation into a case of tainted fuel delivered to the state-owned lectricit du Liban to supply its plants. 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. Yours faithfully, Kalim Rahman. How the 61-year-old embargo is blocking Cubans from finding sponsors in the U.S. His register of interests says he currently earns 50,000 in the role, for about 11 days work a year. Mango madness in IndiaSouth Asia diaspora reporter Gaggan Sabherwal shares the story of the Indian couple whove employed security guards after discovering they had planted an extremely rare mango tree by mistake at $50 a mango they aren't taking any chances! 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. Although Labour can now pick up on details of outrageous behaviour, it never offered a different strategy to that which put people before profits during the horror of the pandemic. The Lebanease newspaper, Al-Akhbar, published a tweet by the Former Energy Minister, Nada Boustani, in which she spoke of ministerial reports confirming the poor quality of fuel and demanding to go on with punitive measures against the suppliers. The company did not respond to a request for comment. 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. The Public Prosecution Office began investigating them to the backdrop of the ongoing debate, in Lebanon, over spoiled fuel bought by the electricity company from the Algerian oil company, Sonatrach, which ranked thirteenth in the ranking of oil companies in the world. BB Naft does not appear, however, among the subsidiaries listed on BB Energys Web site. BB Energy Trading Ltd. BB House 12-14 Ansdell Street London W8 5BN United Kingdom T: +44 20 7938 0500 F: +44 20 7938 0501 www.bbenergy.com Page 1 of 2 ANTI-SLAVERY STATEMENT . NAFT TRADING S.A. Such deals, however, may be authorized by the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control or the Commerce Departments Bureau of Industry and Security. He declined to provide further details. Employees are required to act honestly and ethically when dealing with business counterparts. Ltd. and Singapore-registered PowerCo International Pte. Then Paterson resigned, cancelling future parliamentary votes. 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. When he was appointed, Hayes said he would advise the company on strategic plans in the context of changes in the worldwide energy market. One Bloomberg report showed BB Energy. Ltd., after several rounds of negotiations with a number of companies, the official added. Starmer even chose last week to announce that Labour was no longer in favour of abolishing the House of Lords. In the last seven years every Tory party treasurer has given at least 3 million and been offered a seat in the House of Lords. The case has revealed the need to make all state contracts in the energy sector publicly available, including a 20-year contract signed in 2018 with Russian company Rosneft to rehabilitate and manage the Tripoli Oil Installations. As Lebanon endures worsening blackouts and fuel shortages, BBC Arabic investigates the disastrous state of the country's electricity sector. To enjoy unlimited access to all LOrient Today content, subscribe. Behind the scandalous lies and appalling plunder by the political elite and their business backers lies their drive to profit from pandemic suffering. Corruption policy, and our KYC and recruitment procedures to support our stance that we will not The current legal proceeding is limited to the Baltic, the ship carrying the poor-quality fuel, which was delivered in March 2020 by ZR Energy DMCC. He was one of the witnesses in the pretrial investigation. Image: Cables of the electric generators in the Lebanese capital BeirutCredit: ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images, except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa. Rahmeh, like the other defendants, presented preemptory defenses during the pretrial phase, which the judiciary accepted, except related to the charge of bribery, which it upheld. However, the criminal court announced his innocence to the Algeria Judicial Council, which was concerned with the ongoing investigations in the second Sonatrach case. Hes right, but the cruelty is the treatment of ordinary people and the contempt politicians have for the rest of us. A scandal over the import of sub-standard quality fuel into Lebanon has seen some two-dozen people arrested, two fuel tankers seized and the offices of two major fuel traders raided and sealed off amid ongoing investigations. Laurence Robertson . Companies with Cuban capital or activities on the island. ZR Group and Mr. Rahmeh were unlawfully indicted on a number of charges, of which all but one have been dropped. The inspectorate registered many irregularities and estimated that this branchs deals with the parent company, Sonatrach, and the ministry of defence involved inflated bills. One of the markets may have been Ecuador. The Cuban Embassy in Washington did not answer a comment request for this story. El Nuevo Herald identified at least 25 companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the Bahamas and linked to Cuba. The relationship between the BB Energy Group and Petroecuador appears to have lasted until recent days. . Paterson had, on 16 occasions, used his House of Commons office for meetings relating to his private business interests. The procedures may take a long time, particularly because the number of defendants is high. Aguilar also has served as a deputy in the legislative National Assembly. Panamericanas former director, Jos L. Fernndez de Cosso Domnguez, is listed in the leaked documents as a director of Miramar Investment Corporation Ltd, Euro Foods Ltd, Racuza S.A, Caribbean Sugar Trader, Mercaria Trading S.A. and Sabradell S.A. Fernndez more recently served as Cubas ambassador to Japan and economic attach at the embassy in Paris. By April 28, Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Ghada Aoun said 21 people had been arrested in the case, mostly employees of the Oil Installations. By Irina Slav - Sep 20, 2021, 9:30 AM CDT. According to documents, civil servants were trying to cover for the fact that Randox did not have the equipment it needed. Since the Tories takeover of parliament in 2010, nine of the partys former treasurerswho donated huge amountswere given a position as a Lord. All of which can give our clients a competitive edge. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. The Panama Papers also show that Labiofam S.A., the marketing branch of Grupo Empresarial Labiofam, a Cuban government company that produces vaccines, medicines and other products for the control of carriers of diseases, owns shares in BioAsia Ltd. That company was founded with an investment of 10 million euros from Vietnam, southern Asia and the United Kingdom and lists Mossack Fonseca as its registered agent. The efforts to hide the Cuban governments hand in the offshore companies means that its officials, lawyers and other employees used as stand-ins could eventually become the effective beneficiaries of the shares in those companies. The Office for Budget Responsibility warned in July that while the costs of reaching net zero are significant, they could be much higher if the government delays acting until 2030. 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. Its ownership was in the form of anonymous bearer shares the owners are whoever has those shares. 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). In response to Reuters story, Rosneft has denied it has acted as an intermediary for payments to PDVSA. Testimonies collected by Mount Lebanon Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour as part of the preliminary investigation pointed to suspected shady deals to forge lab tests for the fuels quality specifications, and to the involvement of employees at the labs as well as senior officials at the Energy Ministry, including the director-general of oil installations, Sarkis Hleiss. The Swiss lawyer did not respond to El Nuevo Herald requests for comments on this story. He has also compared climate activists to radical Islam. Last month, he also joined calls from Tory MPs to allow shale fracking to resume in the UK. The contents of the contract were never known to the Lebanese people, despite costing the treasury billions of dollars. 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. Yahya Mawloud, the operations manager of Middle East Power, the company operating the reciprocating engines installed in Zouk and Jiyyeh where the tainted fuel was destined for, had sounded the alarm about the poor quality of fuel in March 2020. Its stated aims are to challenge what it describes as the extremely damaging and harmful policies designed to mitigate climate change. At BB Energy, we are constantly evolving in order to meet new challenges, while developing our personnel to ensure a competitive edge. Patersons lobbying interests extended to sausage company Lynns Country Foods who paid him 12,000 for just 24 hours of work each year. The council set a target of reaching net zero carbon emissions for the borough by 2030. Those sanctioned include the oil trading firms Swissoil Trading and Malta-based Elemento Ltd., as well as Swissoil owner Philipp Paul Vartan Apikian, Spanish-Venezuelan citizen Francisco Javier D'Agostino Casado, and core facilitator and Italian citizen Alessandro Bazzoni. After the return of Ould Kaddour to Sonatrach as its general manager in April 2017, it was not long before he imposed yet another intermediary besides Baha Bassatne. MPs duly voted for it. This is why parliament cannot be relied on for fundamental climate action. 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. The document showed that PDVSA and Reliance would pay Rosneft a marketing fee equivalent to around 3 percent of the sale price, split between them. Instead, investigations have revealed that at least two companies owned by Lebanese businessmen, BB Energy and ZR Energy, were bringing in the fuel. Since sanctions were imposed, Reliance has made such purchases with the full knowledge and approval of the U.S. Department of State (USDOS), Reliance 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. This entire case rests on false assumptions backed up by entirely fabricated charges. The leaked documents also show that Guillermo Faustino Rodrguez Lpez-Calleja, brother of Gen. Luis Alberto Rodrguez Lpez-Calleja, was appointed in 1999 as a director of Pescatlan S.A., a company incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands in 1991 with an initial capital of $50,000. He also said Rahme was a friend but denied he was giving Rahme protection. The Public Prosecution in Mount Lebanon has triggered a heavy-caliber scandal, by arresting two dealers who were supposed to supply the Lebanese Electricity Company with Algerian fuel used in generating electricity. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros/OLJ). Riad Bassatne and his son Wael remained owners of the remaining shares. 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. 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. The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) has absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the sale of 942,000 barrels of crude to Lebanon-based oil firm, BB Energy. Subscribe to our newsletters and offers. One lawyer for BB Naft, Noureddine Kabalan, asked Mossack Fonseca in April of 2008 to create a power of attorney so that the empowered person can be authorized to sign on behalf of the company in Syria and Iraq for specific transactions.. This is ostensibly because it was hard for the judiciary to find evidence linking ZR Energy DDMC and ZR Group Holding SAL, despite the testimonies collected by Mansour. A lawyer for Panamericana, Katiuska Peado Moreno, and a former commercial attach at the Cuban embassy in London, Alejandro Gutirrez Madrigal, are listed as the beneficiaries of shares in Miramar Investment Corporation Ltd. worth $50,000. Our role was to advise the council on how to reduce carbon emissions and make space for nature across the borough. Their statement mentioned that it was all about a dispute with their client in Lebanon, the Ministry of Energy and Water, around a defect in a shipment that was directed to a company under its supervision, which is EDL, a Lebanese power company. The statement added that the London branch is trying to sort out the problem with the client through continuous discussion, and that it will soon be solved, as the relationship between Sonatrach and the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water is excellent. Above all, the government remains ahead in the opinion polls even though it presides over one of the worst death rates in the world. Judge Aoun has charged 12 people in the case, including Electricite du Liban director-general Kamal Hayek for negligence of duty, and Hleiss and director of oil at the energy ministry Aurore Feghali for bribes and negligence of duty. This article was originally published in French. Baha Bassatne remained the sole Sonatrach broker until Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour was appointed general manager of the company and imposed another intermediary. MPs should take all necessary steps to avoid the perception or reality they are using their public position for private gain.. . You may republish if you include an active link to the original. Its official address is the same as that of BB Energy Trading: 140 Brompton Rd., London, SW3 1HY, United Kingdom. The Cuban military is estimated to control at least 60 percent of the islands economy. 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