Ex-Vitol Oil Trader Aguilar Found Guilty in US Bribery Case (4)

A former Vitol Group oil trader was found guilty by a New York jury of orchestrating an elaborate scheme to bribe Mexican and Ecuadorian officials.

A federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, found Javier Aguilar guilty of conspiracy to violate US anti-bribery laws and money laundering. The verdict, which took less than a day, was the culmination of a seven-week trial that provided an unprecedented window into corruption in the commodity industry.

US prosecutors alleged that in order to win $500 million in business, Aguilar used intermediaries, shell companies and at least six co-conspirators to make hundreds of thousands of ...