In December 2023, the Swiss trading arm of Polish state-owned group Orlen wired a $230 million advance to a Dubai intermediary for Venezuelan oil that never arrived. Part of the funds was converted into USDT and handed to counterparts in Caracas on USB drives containing private keys. Financial Times (FT) reported this following its own investigation.
The yacht deal
According to the paper, talks began with a meeting on a yacht in Abu Dhabi attended by Orlen Trading Switzerland (OTS) head Samer Awad and 25-year-old founder of Dubai-based Hannon International, Kam Ho “Alex” Tse.
On November 29, 2023, OTS signed a contract with Hannon to supply about 6 million barrels of heavy Venezuelan Merey 16 crude worth roughly $345 million. OTS expected to make $25–30 million on the deal.
The contract required an advance of two-thirds of the value. Within five days, Hannon received $230 million—with no collateral or bank guarantees, FT noted. By comparison, Orlen usually procures crude via letters of credit.
In October 2023, the Joe Biden administration temporarily eased sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector—the license ran through April 2024 and gave traders a short window to buy cheap crude.
Why USDT was used
Cut off from dollar banking rails, Venezuela’s PdVSA was already taking prepayments in USDT. According to Reuters, by the end of the first quarter of 2024 the state company had shifted a significant share of spot deals to a model requiring prepayment of half the cargo value in the stablecoin, and required new clients to have a crypto wallet.
The OTS–Hannon contract did not mention digital assets or sub-brokers. According to FT, Tse independently converted dollars received from Orlen’s subsidiary into USDT and brought in other Dubai companies.
The scheme began to unravel at the first link: one counterparty received $135 million but passed on only 85 million USDT. The $50 million difference is the subject of a legal dispute in the UAE. Another $30 million went to Dubai’s Horizon Global and never reached Venezuela, according to the investigation.
The $230 million advance was not OTS’s only Venezuela-related payment. As reported by Reuters in May 2024, citing sources and a document, Orlen’s Swiss entity sent roughly $330 million in total to two Dubai intermediaries: $230 million to Hannon International and about $100 million to Horizon Global. The agency said PdVSA received no funds from either, and the state company did not grant Orlen or its intermediaries any loading windows because it requires prepayment of half the cargo’s value before assigning a slot.
USB drives in Caracas hotels
In January 2024, Hannon representatives flew to Caracas to find people with access to PdVSA shipments. FT described private keys to the funds being transported on USB sticks, with meetings held in hotels and restaurants.
On January 5, a local broker received a drive with access to about 60 million USDT; on January 28, another 50 million. In late February and early March, another intermediary received two devices with 11 million USDT each. In total, the paper calculated that intermediaries in Caracas took in more than 132 million USDT.
The oil was never loaded onto Orlen’s vessels. After the wallets were handed over, contact with the brokers ceased, FT wrote. Journalists also obtained a photo of the Jose terminal’s loading schedule listing Orlen ships with 1.9 million barrels of Merey 16 each but without specific dates.
Idle tankers and $72 million in shipping costs
Three Orlen-chartered supertankers arrived at the Jose terminal in December 2023 and sat idle for weeks. The contractual delivery deadline was December 19, and the company paid demurrage throughout.
In January, OTS tried to strike a new 1 million-barrel deal with Hannon but walked away due to contaminated crude. The sides then agreed on a 1 million-barrel fuel oil shipment—in March one vessel loaded about 500,000 barrels, half the agreed volume.
On March 28, 2024, OTS terminated the original contract, and the ships began leaving Venezuelan waters. An internal company estimate put shipping costs tied to deals with Hannon at $72 million, and auditors put the likelihood of recovering funds at about 10%. The dispute with Hannon is in arbitration: the intermediary maintains it was a technical link and bought oil for USDT because OTS could not do so directly. Orlen says the counterparty was obligated to deliver the crude regardless of any third parties involved.
Criminal cases and political fallout
Poland’s government puts total losses at no less than 1.6 billion zloty (about $400 million at 2024 rates), including transport, legal and other costs.
The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office is investigating former Orlen executives, including over inadequate oversight of a $600 million cash pool that financed OTS operations. Charges have been filed against former OTS head Samer Awad and several other former top managers—all deny wrongdoing.
Awad was detained in the UAE in January 2025 on an Interpol red notice, but a local court denied Poland’s extradition request and he was released. In summer 2026, prosecutors charged three more former Orlen and OTS managers, who face up to 25 years in prison.
The deals were struck under the previous management, which was led from 2018 to 2024 by Daniel Obajtek, now a Member of the European Parliament for Law and Justice. The contract was terminated by new Orlen chief Ireneusz Fonfara, appointed after the change of government in Poland.
According to media reports, two days after the Polish tankers left, the Venezuelan terminal shipped heavy crude to India’s Reliance.
Was this a scam from the start?
The answer is the subject of proceedings entangled in dozens of intermediaries, counterparties and repeated currency conversions. Key participants offer their own versions:
- Orlen’s view. Hannon took the money under an obligation to deliver oil and failed to do so; what happened to the funds is its problem;
- Hannon’s view. It was a technical intermediary, tried to arrange the shipment and became a victim—$50 million was stolen by a Dubai counterparty, and about $54 million, it says, went to fees and attempts to secure loading;
- Polish prosecutors’ position. They accuse former managers of actions harmful to the company and inadequate oversight—in legal terms, so far this is a story about a failure of corporate control, not proven collusion.
USDT remains the main settlement tool for sanctioned Venezuelan oil. Analysts estimate that by late 2025–early 2026, through the stablecoin flowed 80% of the country’s export revenue.
