Duro Felguera faces trial over $105 million in alleged bribes to Venezuelan officials

Spain's National Court opens trial this Monday against the Spanish engineering company Duro Felguera over alleged multimillion-dollar bribes paid to Venezuelan public officials. Prosecutors say the payments helped the company win a contract to build a thermal power plant in Caracas in 2009. The anti-corruption prosecutor alleges that Duro Felguera's president and CEO at the time, Juan Carlos Torres and Ángel Antonio del Valle, paid $105 million to Nervis Villalobos, Venezuela's former deputy energy minister between 2004 and 2006. The money allegedly moved through intermediary companies so that Villalobos could use his influence in the Venezuelan administration to benefit the Spanish firm. The indictment was prepared by prosecutor José Grinda, who was himself a target of the alleged scheme under investigation in the Leire Díez case. Investigators are examining whether the former Socialist Party member approached Villalobos to obtain compromising information against Grinda. In exchange, she allegedly offered help with open legal cases in Spain, including this Duro Felguera trial, and faster processing of his Spanish nationality application. A court order in the Leire Díez case suggests Villalobos may have been the link that connected the network to Miriam Serrano, the young woman who reported Grinda. The National Court will also try another former Venezuelan deputy minister, Javier Alvarado Ochoa. Prosecutors say his role, together with that of Rafael Ramírez, then head of the state oil company PDVSA, was key in awarding the $1.5 billion contract to the consortium that included Duro Felguera. The prosecution charges Duro Felguera and its former top executives with a continuing offense of corruption in international commercial transactions. It seeks a €160 million fine against the company, a ban on receiving public subsidies and aid, and a two-year ban on public-sector contracts. For Villalobos, prosecutors seek eight years and nine months in prison for forgery of commercial documents and money laundering, plus a fine of more than €3.6 million. His wife, Milagros Coromoto Torres, faces two years and nine months in prison.