The former co-chief executive officer of PetroTiger, a British Virgin Islands oil and gas company with operations in Colombia and offices in New Jersey, has been indicted for his role in a scheme to pay bribes to government officials in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – aka FCPA – and to defraud PetroTiger.
Joseph Sigelman, 43, of Miami and the Philippines, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of New Jersey and charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA and to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and substantive FCPA and money laundering violations.
Gregory Weisman, 42, of Moorestown, New Jersey, the former general counsel of PetroTiger, pleaded guilty in 2013, to conspiracy to violate the FCPA and to commit wire fraud. Sigelman’s co-CEO, Knut Hammarskjold, 42, of Greenville, South Carolina, pleaded guilty to the same charge on 18 February2014.
According to court documents, Sigelman and others allegedly paid bribes to an official in Colombia in exchange for assistance in securing approval for an oil services contract worth roughly $39 million. To conceal the bribes, they first attempted to make the payments to a bank account in the name of the foreign official’s wife for purported consulting services she did not perform. Sigelman and Hammarskjold provided Weisman invoices, including her bank account information. The conspirators made the payments directly to the official’s bank account when attempts to transfer the money to his wife’s account failed. Sigelman and his conspirators then took steps to conceal the bribe payments from PetroTiger’s board members.
Other court documents allege that Sigelman and others attempted to secure kickback payments while negotiating an acquisition of another company on behalf of PetroTiger, including on behalf of several members of PetroTiger’s board of directors who were helping to fund the acquisition. In exchange for negotiating more favorable terms for the owners of the target company, two of the owners agreed to kick back to the conspirators a portion of the increased purchase price. To conceal the kickback payments, Sigelman and others had the payments deposited into Sigelman’s bank account in the Philippines, created a “side letter” to justify, falsely, the payments and used the code name “Manila Split” to refer to the payments amongst themselves.
Sigelman and Hammarskjold were charged by sealed complaints filed in the District of New Jersey during November of 2013. Hammarskjold was arrested that month, at Newark Liberty International Airport. Sigelman was arrested in January of 2014, in the Philippines. The charges against Sigelman, Hammarskjold and Weisman were unsealed on 6 January 2014.
The case was brought to the attention of DOJ through a voluntary disclosure by PetroTiger, which cooperated with the department’s investigation. The department in a statement said it has worked closely with and has “received significant assistance” from its law enforcement counterparts in the Republic of Colombia. DOJ also thanks the Republic of the Philippines, including the Bureau of Immigration, and the Republic of Panama for their assistance in this matter.
