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Foreign Corrupt Practices Act & Anti-Corruption

Former Direct Access Partners Executives Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

DAP SDNY

Two former executives of now-defunct Direct Access Partners LLC (DAP) were each sentenced to two years in prison for their roles in a bribery scheme involving Venezuela’s state-owned economic development bank, Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social de Venezuela (Bandes).  On December 8, Tomas Clarke, the former Miami-based senior vice president of DAP, was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to forfeit nearly $5.8 million for his role.  On December 4, Ernesto Lujan, the former managing partner at DAP’s Miami office, was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to forfeit $18.5 million. The pair pleaded guilty in August 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to conspiracy to violate the FCPA, the Travel Act, and to commit money laundering, as well as substantive counts of these offenses. As described in a prior FCPA Scorecard post, DAP, a New York based broker-dealer, earned more than $60 million in commissions from trades placed by Bandes over a five year period.  To obtain that business, DAP paid millions of dollars in bribes to a Bandes official, Maria De Los Angeles Gonzalez De Hernandez (Gonzalez), often routing them through third parties and offshore bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.  Clarke and Lujan are two of five former DAP executives to plead guilty in connection with this case.  In March, two other former executives, including DAP’s former CEO, were each sentenced to four years in prison.  One other former executive, who pleaded guilty in August 2013, has yet to be sentenced.  Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty in November 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to conspiracy to violate the Travel Act and to commit money laundering, as well as substantive counts of these offenses, also is awaiting sentencing.