As highlighted in this recent post, Javier Aguilar (a former employee of Vitol Inc.) was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty at trial for paying bribes to Ecuadorian officials as well as related offenses and after pleading guilty to a bribery scheme in Mexico.
Aguilar was also ordered to approximately $7.13 million in criminal forfeiture and a $100,000 fine.
In sentencing Aguilar, U.S. District Judge Eric Vitaliano (E.D. N.Y) considered the sentencing briefs of Aguilar (who requested a non-custodial sentence) and the DOJ (who requested a 12 year sentence).
Aguilar’s brief stated in summary fashion:
“Javier is deeply ashamed of his conduct, has learned from it, and as the past 5.5 years since his arrest have demonstrated, he is an otherwise law-abiding person. Javier is particularly disappointed in himself because his family instilled in him the value of hard work. He worked hard to go to college and ultimately to obtain a PhD. He was proud to follow in his parents’ footsteps in the oil and gas industry, and they were proud of him. In that desire to succeed at Vitol Inc. (“Vitol” or the “Company”), Javier lost himself and paid the bribes at issue here. He knows that this conduct was inconsistent with who he is and how he was raised. It is a choice that he regrets and, as a result, he will suffer the consequences for the rest of his life.
These consequences are considerable and have destroyed his life, regardless of the sentence imposed. Javier was passionate about his profession, and he will never again work in the oil and gas industry. His reputation, which he worked hard to build, is now lost. He forfeited over $7 million dollars and has been under pretrial supervision for almost six years, which included GPS monitoring and a strict curfew for the majority of the time. He will also be deported and is already defending himself against prosecution in Mexico and Ecuador. But most difficult for Javier is that once he is deported, he will no longer be able to raise his two young daughters who are U.S. citizens and reside in the United States. As evidenced by the letters submitted in support of Javier, his daughters are his pride and joy, and the most important things in his life. These consequences are substantial punishment for Javier in this case and, in and of themselves, are sufficient to meet the goals of sentencing.
Furthermore, Javier’s criminal conduct in this case must be viewed as an anomaly in the scope of his life. He is an otherwise law-abiding citizen, a hard worker, a loving father, son, sibling, and friend who is generous and caring towards others in his community. The tremendous impact his conduct has had on his life, coupled with his future deportation, his pending Ecuador criminal case, and the criminal investigation pending against him in Mexico, are more than sufficient to deter Javier of any future crime. Nor does the public need to be protected from Javier’s activity. He is no longer in the oil and gas industry, and has been a model supervisee.”
The DOJ’s brief stated in summary fashion:
“The defendant Javier Aguilar corrupted two foreign governments to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas contracts, to set up even bigger corrupt deals in the future, and, ultimately, to enrich himself. For over half a decade, the defendant planned and executed these corrupt schemes. For the defendant—a well-educated and successful commodities trader—bribery was the ultimate trade and he used all the impressive resources at his disposal to maximize his upside while minimizing the risk he would get caught. He conspired with foreign and domestic middlemen and fixers, he exploited an elaborate network of offshore shell companies and bank accounts, and he used sham contracts, fake invoices, alias email accounts and coded language to conceal his conduct.
At the time the defendant began these crimes, he was already highly successful, making more than a million dollars a year, and had amassed more than six million in Vitol equity alone. He was motivated solely by greed and ego; not need or poverty. The amount of wealth he had amassed when the scheme began is almost an incomprehensible amount of money for one person. By 2020, the year he was arrested, his wealth in Vitol equity alone had grown by more than a complete order of magnitude, to over $75 million. And yet, that was still not enough for him. When the defendant was arrested, he was pursuing new and bigger corrupt deals and refining his means and methods to conceal his ongoing schemes.
The defendant must be held to account for these serious crimes. The Court must not permit the defendant’s cool calculation of the cost and benefit of his crimes to pay off. His sentence must also send a message to other professionals who are tempted to gain an advantage or to win business through cheating and bribery. The Court’s sentence must also reflect the real harm corruption inflicts on the citizens of foreign governments whose trust is broken, on competitors who choose to play by the rules, and on the reputation of our country, which is tarnished every time an American resident or company pays bribes abroad.
The defendant’s sentencing memorandum seeks to minimize his conduct and defy the jury’s verdict. As the defendant would tell it, he committed a harmless and technical offense. And even then, he is a victim of circumstance, merely the product of a corrupt environment whose only chance at success was to follow others down a path paved by corruption. Based on this premise, and the suggestion that the goals of sentencing have already been achieved because he paid a criminal forfeiture money judgment in full and is facing deportation, the defendant takes the extraordinary step of seeking an entirely non-incarceratory sentence.
International corruption is not a victimless crime. The defendant’s sentencing submission and request for a non-incarceratory sentence demonstrates his fundamental failure to accept responsibility or grapple with the harm his actions have caused for two governments, the law-abiding people who are governed by them, and companies that seek to compete fairly in international markets. The Court should reject the defendant’s effort to blame everyone but himself for two schemes that he originated and executed over more than five years. The evidence at trial demonstrated that he was at the center of his schemes, not on the outside looking in. The Court should reject the defendant’s request that he simply be permitted to pay a fine and walk away to Mexico—an outcome he contemplated at the time of the schemes—because that result does not serve any of the Section 3553(a) factors. It would not provide just punishment or deterrence to Aguilar or other similarly situated individuals. It would neither promote respect for the law nor reflect the seriousness of Aguilar’s crimes.
The Court should impose a sentence of at least 144 months in prison. Aguilar’s key role in five years of widespread corruption merits such a sentence. His failure to accept responsibility and selfish motives warrant such a sentence. Such a sentence will send a message to others that the United States will not be a part of the corruption of foreign governments and that the rewards of this corruption are not worth the risks.
