Mexicans Charged With Bribing US Refinery in Tighter Trump Focus

Two Mexican citizens, including one with possible cartel connections, have been indicted in southern Texas on allegations of foreign bribery, the first new charges since President Donald Trump’s Justice Department restarted enforcement of the anticorruption law.

All new investigations and prosecutions of the statute were halted by a Trump executive order in February, before they resumed under new parameters in June. The indictment unsealed in Texas, following an arrest and arraignment of the lead defendant, provides an indication of the administration’s curtailed scope in bringing foreign corruption cases, with a focus on transnational criminal organizations and cartels.

DOJ white-collar prosecutors commonly used the 1977 law in recent decades to deliver multimillion-dollar corporate resolutions, including some guilty pleas, by US-based multinationals.

The defendants, who were lawfully residing in the US with green cards, are accused of paying $150,000 worth of luxury items and cash to officials at the Mexican state oil company Pemex and its Houston-area subsidiary, prosecutors said in a court filing. The bribes allegedly led to at least $2.5 million in Pemex contracts awarded to one of the defendants’ oil and gas company.

A separate court filing alleges there is evidence that one defendant, Ramon Alexandro Rovirosa Martinez, “has ties to Mexican cartel members.” That linkage overtly aligns this case with guidelines Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced in June for the types of more limited overseas bribery investigations DOJ would initiate.

He issued that policy to resume enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from Trump’s order that froze it by arguing the law’s economic burdens to US businesses seeking to expand overseas.

The guidelines say investigations and prosecutions into foreign bribery will proceed with a focus on areas such as criminal conduct linked to the activities of drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations.

The Pemex bribes alleged Monday took the form of a Louis Vuitton handbag and Hublot watch, prosecutors said.

Earlier Monday DOJ announced the first corporate resolution—a $4.7 million settlement with Liberty Mutual—under the foreign bribery law since the administration resumed approving new cases.

The case is USA v. Martinez, S.D. Tex., No. 4:25-cr-415, motion filed 8/11/25.