Secret audio recorded in Madrid in 2017 captures “shadow bankers” laying out a plan to launder millions of dollars tied to corruption at Venezuela’s state oil company, including a proposed bond swap designed to evade anti-money-laundering controls, OCCRP reported. 

The recording, obtained by OCCRP, was made by Venezuelan lawyer Pedro Binaggia while wearing a hidden microphone as part of an undercover operation, the report said. In the recording, Binaggia meets with Carmelo Urdaneta, a former legal counsel to Venezuela’s oil ministry, and three financial specialists to discuss how to retrieve and “clean” tainted funds linked to Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). 

The report ties the conversation to “Operation Money Flight,” a U.S. Justice Department investigation into an alleged scheme that siphoned $1.2 billion from PDVSA between 2014 and 2018. The specific Madrid meeting focused on how to recover nearly $80 million after a bank flagged inconsistencies in paperwork supporting a transfer. 

According to OCCRP, the men discussed routing money through Cyprus as a compliance “bridge” into the United Kingdom, betting that a U.K. broker would rely on due diligence performed in Cyprus. The value could be moved in part through a U.K. government bond, they concluded.

“It has to be done in a way that the systems won’t detect us,” one participant said on the recording, according to the report. 

Urdaneta later pleaded guilty in the U.S. to conspiracy to commit money laundering and was sentenced in 2022 to more than four years in prison, OCCRP said. Two of the financial specialists captured in the recording, Portuguese national Hugo Gois and Venezuelan lawyer and asset manager José Vicente Amparan, have been indicted in the U.S. and are also under investigation in Spain, according to the report. 

Swiss asset manager Ralph Steinmann has been indicted in the U.S. and labeled a fugitive by the court. 

Read more at OCCRP