World News | Sources: Venezuela Wooed Texas Republican to Ease Sanctions
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Venezuela's socialist government tried to recruit then-Congressman Pete Sessions to broker a meeting with the CEO of Exxon Mobil at the same time it was secretly paying a close former House colleague USD 50 million to keep US sanctions at bay.
Miami, Jun 22 (AP) Venezuela's socialist government tried to recruit then-Congressman Pete Sessions to broker a meeting with the CEO of Exxon Mobil at the same time it was secretly paying a close former House colleague USD 50 million to keep US sanctions at bay.
An official at state-run oil giant PDVSA sent an email to the Texas Republican on June 8, 2017 seeking his help arranging a meeting between Venezuela's oil minister and Darren Woods, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's successor at the helm of the Irving, Texas-based Exxon, the Associated Press has learned.
The purpose: to lure Exxon back to Venezuela after a decade's absence and inject much-needed dynamism into the OPEC nation's collapsing oil industry.
The email, which was seen by the AP, has been shared with U.S. federal law enforcement looking into the person who allegedly instructed Sessions to send the email: former Miami Congressman David Rivera, according to two people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically sensitive matter.
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Rivera at the time was collecting part of a whopping USD 50 million contract for three months of consulting work for an American unit of PDVSA — a business deal now being investigated by federal prosecutors in Miami because he never registered as an agent of a foreign government.
It's not clear how Sessions, who is running again for Congress this fall, acted on the request, though he did not reply directly to the email. In any case, Exxon rebuffed the sought-after meeting in Dallas, according to the two people. But Sessions did engage in other mediation efforts in Venezuela over the next 15 months.
At the urging of a Venezuelan media mogul who would go on to become a top U.S. fugitive, he secretly traveled to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with President Nicolas Maduro.
The businessman, Raul Gorrin, was present at the meeting and Rivera served as a translator, a third person familiar with the visit said, also on condition of anonymity.
A few months later Sessions phoned the socialist leader with Rudy Giuliani, the US president's personal lawyer, around the same time both men were involved in another shadow diplomatic effort to fire the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Both men's interest in Venezuela and Sessions' advocacy of a Trump-Maduro meeting came as a surprise to John Bolton, according to the former National Security Adviser's new book on his time at the White House.
The AP first reported Sessions' peacemaking trip to Caracas in 2018. The earlier email regarding Exxon and his connection to Rivera was not known at the time.
Sessions' role in the ultimately futile back channeling, more extensive than previously believed, is now part of prosecutors' examination of Rivera's paid consulting and how the money he received from Venezuela — at least USD 15 million of the promised USD 50 million — was spent, the two people said.
While there is no indication Sessions benefited from Rivera's consulting contract, the two men's efforts overlapped, with the same interlocutors, and at times seemed aligned.
A far cry from today's “maximum pressure” campaign by the U.S. to remove Maduro, there was a brief window following Trump's 2016 election when the socialist leader was desperately looking to court American investment and repair relations with Washington.
Trump's perceived softness on Russia — Venezuela's top ally — spurred Caracas to quickly mount an influence campaign that included funneling through Citgo, PDVSA's Houston-based subsidiary, $500,000 to Trump's inaugural committee — topping contributions by corporate giants Verizon, Pepsi and Wal-Mart.
Sessions was considered a key target of Venezuela's charm offensive because of his close ties to Tillerson — both men have held leadership positions in the Boy Scouts of America — and ties to the U.S. oil industry. Exxon is among the firms headquartered in his former Dallas district.
The five-sentence message sent to Sessions' personal email address, which starts with the word “eagle," is short on specifics. But it makes reference to earlier correspondence, also seen by the AP, in which Exxon General Counsel and Vice President Randall Ebner mentioned a willingness to discuss new business after the settlement around the same time of a long-running arbitration stemming from
Venezuela's takeover of an Exxon-run oil field in 2007.
To woo the company back at a time when oil production was collapsing, Maduro was ready to offer Exxon a concession in the Hugo Chavez Oil Belt, which sits atop the world's largest crude reserves, the two people said.
“We thank you for your commitment to making this meeting happen," concludes the email to Sessions.
Exxon declined to comment. But by the time the ink dried on a USD 259 million payment schedule signed between Exxon and PDVSA on July 31, 2017, relations between the two countries had become more hostile.
The Trump administration started rolling out the first round of sanctions in response to Maduro's plans to rewrite the constitution and undermine the opposition-controlled congress. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)