To dodge sanctions, Venezuela turns to Asia asphalt giant

MIAMI (AP) — Back in January, a yearlong campaign of U.S. sanctions was taking its toll at Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Many of PDVSA’s overseas bank accounts had been frozen, hampering its ability to pay vendors on whom it relies to keep the nation’s crude flowing.

So the company leaned on a longtime client from Thailand, Tipco Asphalt, to blunt the impact: in exchange for discounts on oil, Tipco would pay PDVSA’s bills and deduct the amounts from what it owed the Venezuelan oil giant, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

PDVSA quickly took advantage of the arrangement. On Jan. 10, the oil company sent Tipco executives 43 emails related to payment instructions, prompting a mild rebuke.

“Tipco is a PDVSA client, not the Venezuelan central bank,” commented Jean-Pierre Pastor, Tipco’s legal representative in Venezuela, in an email to PDVSA.

The e-mail is just one of the dozens of documents obtained by the AP as part of an investigation into how Venezuela is trying to skirt harsh U.S. sanctions that have exacerbated an economic collapse rarely seen outside war zones. At a time when Nicolás Maduro’s government is seen as a pariah in the west, the financial arrangement with Tipco has quietly allowed PDVSA to move hundreds of millions of dollars around the world, records show.

The publicly traded Thai company says its payments to third parties a standard feature of its oil purchases from Venezuela, which are not barred by U.S. sanctions applicable only to American companies. Nonetheless, the AP has learned that the outlays are being scrutinized by the Trump administration, which views them as a lifeline to Maduro.

The documents — invoices, contracts, and wire receipts — were provided to the AP by a former PDVSA consultant...