© 2016 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
(Nov. 15) – The U.S. Department of Justice has officially agreed to allow National Oilwell Varco avoid criminal and civil prosecution for alleged trade sanction violations if the Houston-based oil and gas driller pays $25 million in fines – a deal the company officially accepted last week.
NOV signed a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas on Nov. 9 that required the global energy company to pay the $25 million penalty.
The Justice Department and three other federal agencies investigated NOV and two of its subsidiaries for dozens of illegal business deals valued at several million dollars with officials in Iran, Cuba and Sudan between 2002 and 2009.
The agreement between NOV and DOJ was first reported Monday by the FCPA Blog.
Legal documents show that federal prosecutors, the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Commerce Department started investigating NOV and its subsidiary Dreco Energy Services in 2009 for possible trade sanctions.
FCPA Blog reports that NOV approved four Dreco transactions related to the sale of goods from Dreco to Iran between 2002 and 2005. The publication also cites OFAC records identifying two other sales to Iran worth about $13 million.
The OFAC said the four commission payments to an agent involved in the Iran trade were “egregious” because senior-level finance executives within NOV approved them.
“NOV appears to have willfully blinded itself to the consequences of its approval by acquiescing to Dreco’s deliberate non-identification of Iran in its communications with NOV,” OFAC said.
Federal regulators also identified 45 transactions involving the sale of goods to Cuba between 2007 and 2009 worth an estimated $1.7 million and a $20,000 transaction in Sudan in 2005, according to FCPA Blog.
NOV employs more than 60,000 people in about 1,200 locations across six continents. The company reported $14.7 billion in revenues last year and has a market cap of $12 billion.
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