How Poland lost $230mn trying to buy Venezuelan oil with crypto
An attempt to use digital currencies for a bold oil trade became one of Poland’s biggest scandals
Paul Caruana Galizia in London
© Emanuel SantosIn late November 2023, on a boat off Abu Dhabi, a top executive at Poland’s biggest state-backed energy group turned to a young trader he knew and gave him a deceptively simple instruction: “Go out and get me Venezuelan oil.”
The executive was Samer Awad, who had been appointed to lead Orlen’s new Swiss trading arm just a year earlier.
The trader was Kam Ho “Alex” Tse, the founder of Dubai-based Hannon International, an upstart oil trading outfit.
What followed their conversation has become a bizarre and sprawling commodity dispute, involving hundreds of millions of dollars of missing money, vast sums of cryptocurrency swapped on USB sticks in Caracas restaurants — and ultimately very little Venezuelan oil.
Warsaw prosecutors have charged Awad and other former executives at Orlen Trading Switzerland with criminal mismanagement.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has folded the scandal into a wider clean-up of state companies, saying: “Poles must learn the truth.”
An FT investigation — based on internal company documents, shipping data, blockchain analysis, court filings and extensive interviews with the people involved — reveals how a race for crude oil and cryptocurrency has become one of Poland’s biggest-ever corporate scandals.
The saga opens a window on a shadowy corner of the oil market, where little-known intermediaries and cryptocurrency replace conventional buyers and payment channels, offering traders outsized profits but exposing them to serious risk.
Awad and Tse’s meeting in Abu Dhabi in 2023 came during the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Hannon, Tse’s company, was hosting a boat party to coincide with the race.
Orlen was sponsoring one of the teams.
The two men had once done oil deals together, Tse for a Chinese company and Awad as an independent trader.
Awad, then 52, was born into a Palestinian family in Lebanon and spent time as a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis, then studied law in Krakow.
He entered the oil industry through a trading house involved in the UN’s Iraq oil-for-food programme, then set up an oil-services business in the Middle East and Africa before trading crude from Iran and Venezuela.
In August 2022, Orlen appointed him as its trading arm’s first chief executive.
Tse, then just 25, had started his career working for a fuel trader in Hong Kong, where there are no restrictions on trading in crude from those markets.
He had worked in Basra, managing Iraqi oil trades, but most of his work was on Venezuelan oil.
In October 2023, Washington eased oil sanctions on Venezuela for six months in the hopes that the country’s revolutionary socialist leader, Nicolás Maduro, would allow democratic elections.
But tough US restrictions originally imposed in 2019 had driven away buyers and choked conventional payment channels, leaving Venezuelan crude cheap — but difficult to buy.
For PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, crypto had offered a workaround to US sanctions.
The company had increasingly demanded advance payments in USDT, Tether’s widely traded cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar, which could move over public blockchains outside the conventional banking system.
The temporary respite from sanctions did not immediately reverse this trend.
For bold oil traders, the six-month window of sanctions relief was an opportunity to make serious profits.
Orlen’s trading arm, OTS, had launched the previous year to expand its global trading capability and help Poland diversify away from Russian oil after the shock of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It had $600mn to trade with.
Would a European state-backed energy group gamble a large chunk of that money trading oil from a pariah state, paying through an intermediary in digital currency?
Tse said he told Awad about the need to use USDT despite the change in sanctions, and that he assumed a company like Orlen would balk at dealing in crypto.
A person familiar with Awad’s account said Hannon’s payment arrangements were its own business; Awad’s job was to pursue bold trades.
Ultimately, OTS jumped in with both feet.
A few days after the boat party, on November 29 2023, it signed a contract to buy about 6mn barrels of PDVSA’s main heavy blend, Merey 16, from Tse’s company Hannon for $345mn.
OTS expected the deal would generate a profit of about $25mn to $30mn, according to a person familiar with Awad’s account.
Orlen said “confidentiality obligations” prohibited it from commenting on the contract.
The contract did not mention cryptocurrency or PDVSA’s alleged payment demands, and did not identify any intermediaries.
It required a two-thirds advance.
Within five days, OTS had wired Hannon $230mn.
Then things began to go wrong.
Tse had founded Hannon two-and-a-half years earlier in Dubai with just three core employees.
Now that the company had $230mn of Orlen’s money, along with $15mn of Hannon’s own, Tse had to get the oil from PDVSA, and the USDT to pay for it.
He first turned to a 46-year-old Italian, Vitonicola Mariano, who ran a company called Lexcor Energy.
Mariano was previously the director of a now-closed Italian restaurant in south-east London, a film-production company, and a business that helped arrange visas for Russia, where he now lives.
Mariano told Hannon he was “a nominated agent of PDVSA” and shared as evidence a confidentiality agreement with the state oil company, according to documents seen by the FT.
On the same day that Tse and Awad signed their deal, Hannon said it agreed a matching contract, seen by the FT, with Mariano’s Lexcor Energy Ltd, incorporated in the UK.
Throughout its history, the entity has filed dormant accounts.
When asked about this, Lexcor said the contract was signed by Lexcor Energy CA, a Venezuelan operating entity with its own resources.
It added that the contract signed by the UK company did not appear to be authentic, which Hannon disputes.
Tse turned to getting his hands on USDT to pay for the oil.
He first used a Dubai financial-services company he had dealt with previously, which provided 80mn USDT for a commission of some $400,000.
That left another $160mn or so to convert.
He then went to two companies that Hannon said were recommended by Lexcor, though Mariano denies that.
The first was Horizon Global, a recently incorporated Dubai company.
Hannon sent Horizon $135mn but said it received only 85mn USDT, leaving a $50mn shortfall that is now the subject of a court case in Dubai.
Horizon is contesting the claim and did not respond to requests for comment.
The second was Gold Mar International Trading, another recently incorporated Dubai company.
Mariano denies any connection to Gold Mar, but his name appears on company emails — whose authenticity he also disputes.
Hannon sent Gold Mar $30mn in December 2023, expecting it to be converted into USDT and then “onward remittance to PDVSA by Lexcor” to secure the crude.
But the money would never reach PDVSA.
Within days of the boat party, things were going badly awry.
While Orlen’s money moved through Dubai, three supertankers chartered by the Polish energy group were on their way to Venezuela.
They reached Venezuelan waters by mid-December, according to shipping records, anchoring near the José terminal, the country’s main crude-export hub.
Awad was expecting Tse to deliver the promised 6mn barrels of oil in three stages by a final deadline of December 19.
But week after week, well beyond the deadline, the three tankers waited, empty, as Orlen accumulated demurrage — charges payable when a chartered vessel is held beyond the agreed period.
Hannon first blamed the loading delays on a PDVSA repricing, then said the Venezuelan group was giving priority to larger buyers in the rush before the sanctions window closed.
Awad and Orlen were running out of patience with Hannon, which was running out of patience with Mariano.
Pressed for updates in December 2023, Mariano claimed in a WhatsApp message to Tse’s colleague that he was just getting documents to “delsy” — then Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodríguez.
By January, with just three months left of the sanctions window, Tse decided to take things into his own hands.
With a colleague, he headed to Venezuela.
They stayed at the luxury Cayena Hotel and the JW Marriott in Caracas.
They brought USB sticks containing huge sums of USDT, and hired an armoured car and bodyguards “for fear of kidnapping” in the country.
Caracas offered no shortage of brokers claiming access to PDVSA, replacing established companies that had left before the sanctions were temporarily lifted.
The resulting web of intermediaries and cryptocurrency deals had triggered the government’s PDVSA-Cripto corruption investigation, which burst into public view with arrests in March 2023.
As the pair arrived in Caracas, the investigation was tearing through the local oil industry.
Brokers would be here today, and gone tomorrow.
On January 5 2024, Tse said his colleague met a man called José Castillo of an agency called Synergy at a hotel perched above Caracas on the slopes of El Ávila.
According to Tse, Castillo said he could secure the oil it needed and so Tse’s colleague handed him a USB stick containing the digital keys to 60mn USDT.
For weeks, there was little documentary evidence that the payment would produce oil.
Then a high-ranking Venezuelan official sent Awad a photo seen by the FT of an apparent PDVSA export schedule for the José terminal, covering March and April, where OTS’s three supertankers — Olympic Trophy, Hili and FPMC C Melody — were each listed alongside 1.9mn barrels of Merey 16.
Tse said his colleague met Castillo again at an Italian delicatessen in Caracas on January 28 and handed him another USB stick, this time with 50mn USDT.
On the PDVSA schedule, the loading dates alongside Orlen’s three supertankers were marked “TBN”: to be nominated.
No date was ever finalised.
Before March-April, the period covered by the schedule, Hannon said it had lost contact with Castillo.
The FT was unable to reach Castillo for comment.
Another $110mn was gone.
And still no oil.
As Tse and Awad wrestled with the disaster of their initial deal, they decided to try their luck buying other types of oil that PDVSA sold.
The idea was to reduce what Hannon owed OTS under the original contract, according to internal OTS emails.
But the first attempt to make a deal for 1mn barrels of a lighter PDVSA blend on January 10 backfired, when OTS found the crude to be heavily contaminated and rejected it.
On January 26, OTS tried again with Hannon, agreeing to buy 1mn barrels of Venezuelan fuel oil.
But the deal also required advance payments in USDT, and Tse was running down his stockpile.
A few days later, Mariano of Lexcor returned about 21mn USDT from the funds Gold Mar received in December, according to an email he sent Hannon, after Lexcor finally accepted it could not secure the oil it had promised.
Gold Mar did not respond to a request for comment on these specific points.
Lexcor said it had “no knowledge” of them.
With the fuel-oil contract signed and more USDT available, Tse said he tried a new Caracas broker, a man called Juan Rodríguez of Consulting Services.
On February 25, Tse said his colleague gave Rodríguez a USB stick giving access to 11mn USDT at a plush restaurant in the upscale Las Mercedes neighbourhood of Caracas.
Two days later new managers took control of OTS.
Law and Justice (PiS), a conservative-nationalist party that governed Poland for eight years, had lost power to Tusk’s coalition in a stunning comeback by the pro-European bloc.
The new government began overhauling the management of state companies.
Under PiS, Orlen had been run by Daniel Obajtek, who had grown the company into Europe’s third-largest refiner.
Tusk accused PiS of using state companies for patronage.
His new government pushed out Obajtek and Awad.
Obajtek said Awad’s “appointment was preceded by the appropriate procedure and a verification process conducted within the group’s structures”.
Orlen’s new chief executive, Ireneusz Fąfara, said he was surprised by what he saw as the company’s weak internal governance and the number of people “associated with politics” working there.
One of the most alarming things he discovered was the deal with Hannon.
On March 8, a ship chartered by Orlen loaded the equivalent of roughly 500,000 barrels of fuel oil at José, according to shipping records, or half the volume it expected under the contract with Hannon.
On the same day, Tse said his colleague had a second meeting with Rodríguez, handing him another USB stick containing another 11mn USDT.
By March 20, there was no sign of the second half of the fuel oil cargo, and Tse said he had lost contact with Rodríguez.
The FT could not reach Rodríguez for comment.
In Tse’s account, he had given $132mn to two brokers and received little in return.
His company says that another $54mn was lost to crypto fees and other attempts to secure oil that it declined to provide specific details about.
It added that no commission was retained.
Tse’s Hannon said it was advised by its Venezuela contacts not to keep records of crypto dealings.
As March 2024 came to a close, the original deal for heavy crude was still unfulfilled.
Orlen, now under new management, had finally had enough.
On March 28, as demurrage costs mounted and the sanctions window narrowed, OTS finally terminated the original sales contract.
“We hope that you can give us another 5 days,” Tse pleaded in an email to OTS’s new boss the following day.
“As such, we request that you withdraw the termination notices you sent.”
A few hours later, Tse’s colleague emailed OTS about the supertanker Olympic Trophy, which was set to leave Venezuela.
“Proceeding with departure would result in a breach of contract,” he wrote.
“We eagerly await positive news from your end.”
But OTS had already moved on.
Inside the company, the transaction had become an accounting and legal crisis.
An internal email ahead of an April 4 meeting with KPMG asked staff to analyse the pre-payment, prospects for recovery, possible impairment and fraud, sanctions exposure and Swiss insolvency obligations.
One internal entry assessed recovery of funds from Hannon at “10 per cent with probability 50 per cent”.
Orlen’s ships finally began to leave Venezuelan waters.
Only one, which held the half-load of fuel oil valued at $28.8mn, had anything to sell.
According to an internal OTS estimate, shipping costs across its Hannon contracts reached $72mn — more than it ever expected to earn from the original Merey 16 trade.
The Polish government estimated that Orlen lost at least PLN1.6bn, about $424mn, a sum that includes shipping, legal and other costs it attributes to mismanagement.
More than two years later, Orlen is still trying to recover the $230mn it advanced to Tse’s Hannon.
The dispute is in arbitration, but Hannon said it did not have anywhere near the funds.
“Hannon has participated in all stages of the arbitration and will continue to do so,” says David McCoy of ADG Legal in Abu Dhabi, the company’s lawyer.
“Hannon remains open to a constructive dialogue with Orlen about resolving this matter amicably.”
At the heart of that dispute are two radically different accounts of what Hannon had been hired to do.
Hannon said it was acting as a “sleeve”, buying Venezuelan oil with USDT because OTS was not allowed by Orlen to do so directly.
A person familiar with Awad’s account said he had no control over Hannon’s downstream suppliers or cryptocurrency arrangements.
Orlen and OTS’s new management are more categorical.
They said Hannon was never hired as an intermediary: its contractual obligation was simply to deliver the oil, and any use of third parties did not “diminish its liabilities to OTS under the sales contract”.
Meanwhile, Warsaw prosecutors are investigating former Orlen executives over the alleged “inadequate oversight” of the $600mn cash-pooling facility that funded OTS’s trading.
Obajtek denies personal responsibility for OTS’s trades, saying Orlen’s board acted collectively and approved its access to a pool of cash, not individual contracts.
Now a PiS MEP, Obajtek said he was instructed not to comment further because of the ongoing criminal proceedings in which he was “questioned several times”, though he was not charged.
The charges against Awad and former OTS colleagues, which they deny, have not been tested at trial.
Awad was detained in the UAE in January 2025 after an Interpol notice, but Emirati courts rejected Poland’s extradition request and he was released.
A person familiar with Awad’s account said the partial loading of fuel oil showed that Hannon could obtain product from PDVSA and that, given more time, the Merey 16 could also have been loaded.
Hannon takes the same position.
Orlen said Hannon had four months, missed every agreed delivery deadline, and had no prospect of completing the trade before the sanctions window closed.
On April 15 2024, after Orlen had terminated the Hannon contract, one of the ships it had previously chartered loaded up with heavy crude at the José terminal.
The supertanker and the oil it carried were bound for the Gujarat refinery of Reliance Industries, one of the world’s largest oil processors.
Someone else, with better connections, had managed to do what Awad and Tse could not.
There was, in the end, also more time.
Two days later, hours before the sanctions relief window was due to expire, Washington gave traders another 45 days to complete their Venezuelan oil deals.
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