Poland's state energy group Orlen tried to buy Venezuelan oil using cryptocurrency in late 2023, before Donald Tusk became prime minister, but ended up with empty tankers instead of crude and is still trying to recover the money it spent.
The deal began at the end of November 2023 on a boat off Abu Dhabi, during the city's Formula One Grand Prix. Orlen Trading Switzerland, the trading arm of Orlen, Poland's largest state-owned energy group, was sponsoring one of the F1 teams at the time.
A Meeting on a Boat in Abu Dhabi
Samer Awad, 52, a director at Orlen, travelled to the race because of the company's sponsorship and met Kam Ho "Alex" Che, 25, founder of Hannon International, a newly formed Dubai-based oil trading company. The two met on a boat where Hannon was hosting a party, and Awad instructed Che to find oil from Venezuela.
Orlen Trading Switzerland, known as OTS, had been set up the previous year to expand the group's global trading capacity and help diversify Poland's oil supplies away from Russian crude.
Why Venezuela
In October 2023 the United States eased oil sanctions on Venezuela for six months, making transactions with the country easier and cheaper than with other suppliers. At the time, Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA increasingly demanded prepayment in USDT, the widely traded cryptocurrency issued by Tether and pegged to the dollar, as a way of working around the American sanctions. The temporary sanctions relief created an opening for profit.
Days after the party on the boat, on 29 November 2023, a contract was signed for Hannon to supply OTS with about 6 million barrels of PDVSA's main heavy crude blend, Merey 16, for $345 million. According to the Financial Times, the contract made no mention of cryptocurrency or of PDVSA's payment demands and named no intermediaries. It only specified an advance payment covering two-thirds of the total.
Money Sent, Oil Delayed
Within five days OTS transferred $230 million to Hannon's accounts. Che then turned to a Dubai financial services firm he had worked with before to obtain USDT, paying $400,000 to acquire 80 million USDT for the oil purchase. He then approached two further companies recommended by Lexcor Energy, then run by Vitonicola Mariano, who now lives in Russia.
The first, Horizon Global, a recently formed Dubai company, received $135 million from Che but delivered only 85 million USDT, leaving a $50 million shortfall. The second, Gold Mar International Trading, another newly formed Dubai firm whose paperwork carried Mariano's name, received $30 million from Hannon in December 2023. That money was meant to be converted into USDT and sent to PDVSA through Lexcor to secure the crude, but it never reached PDVSA.
Meanwhile three supertankers chartered by Orlen were heading to Venezuela. Shipping records show they arrived in mid-December and anchored near the José terminal, the country's main crude export hub. Awad expected Che to deliver the 6 million barrels in three stages, with a final deadline of 19 December. Weeks after that deadline passed, the three tankers sat empty at the port while Orlen racked up demurrage fees, the charges owed when a chartered vessel is held beyond its agreed time.
Che blamed the delays first on loading problems, then on a price adjustment by PDVSA, and later said the Venezuelan company was prioritising larger buyers as it rushed to sell before American sanctions returned.
A Risky Trip to Caracas
In January, with only three months left before the sanctions were due to be reinstated, Che decided to act directly. He travelled to Venezuela with a colleague, staying at the luxury Cayena hotel and the JW Marriott in Caracas. They carried USB sticks loaded with large sums in USDT and rented an armoured car and bodyguards, fearing they could be kidnapped.
On 5 January 2024, Che and his colleague met a man named José Castillo, who worked for a company called Synergy, at a hotel above Caracas on the slopes of the El Ávila mountain. Che said Castillo claimed he could secure the oil they needed, so the colleague handed him a USB stick holding the digital keys to 60 million USDT.
For weeks there was little sign the payment would produce any oil. Then a senior Venezuelan official sent Orlen's director a photo of PDVSA's export schedule for the José terminal for March and April, listing OTS's three supertankers, the Olympic Trophy, the Hili and the FPMC C Melody, each allotted 1.9 million barrels of Merey 16. The loading dates on the schedule, however, were marked as "to be determined."
New Contacts, More Crypto
Che offered Castillo a further 50 million USDT, while on 26 January OTS made a fresh attempt with Hannon to buy 1 million barrels from Venezuela. That deal also required advance payment in USDT, just as Che's reserves were nearly exhausted. Days later, Mariano of Lexcor returned about 21 million USDT from the funds Gold Mar had received in December, after acknowledging he could not deliver the promised oil.
After the new contract was signed, Che stopped dealing with Castillo and instead turned to a man named Juan Rodríguez of a firm called Consulting Services, who promised he could find oil. On 25 February, Che handed Rodríguez a USB stick giving access to 11 million USDT at a luxury restaurant in Caracas's upscale Las Mercedes district.
Political Change and Fallout
Two days later, new managers took charge of OTS, and Donald Tusk became Poland's prime minister. His new government began reshaping leadership at state-owned companies, and Orlen Trading Switzerland came under scrutiny, accused of being used for patronage purposes.
The company's management was replaced. Orlen's new chief executive, Ireneusz Fąfara, said he was surprised by what he saw as weak internal governance at the unit, and by the number of people "connected to politics" who worked there.
He also disclosed that on 8 March a ship chartered by Orlen loaded roughly 500,000 barrels at José, according to shipping records, half the volume called for under the Hannon contract. On the same day, Che said, his colleague held a second meeting with Rodríguez and handed over another USB stick containing 11 million more USDT.
By 20 March there was still no sign of the remaining half of the cargo, and Che said he had lost contact with Rodríguez.
Two years on, Orlen is still trying to recover the millions of dollars it paid Hannon for the oil, with the dispute now in arbitration. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Warsaw are investigating former Orlen executives over how they raised the funds and how the OTS subsidiary's transactions were financed.
