Turkish man arrested in Florida for allegedly violating US sanctions

A Turkish man was arrested in Florida for allegedly conspiring to ship oil for Venezuela’s state-owned energy company, violating U.S. sanctions, officials announced Monday.

Taskin Torlak, 37, was taken into custody in Miami on Saturday while attempting to depart for Türkiye, according to authorities.

“This defendant allegedly conspired to illegally sell Venezuelan oil, using deceit and trickery to conceal its Venezuelan origins,” said Matthew Graves, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, in a statement.

Graves emphasized that Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, has been sanctioned by the U.S. government to prevent the current regime from further depleting the nation’s resources while it remains in power unlawfully.

According to the criminal complaint, Torlak and unnamed co-conspirators have been engaged in a complex scheme since at least November 2020 to evade U.S. sanctions and ship petroleum products from Venezuela and Iran.

The scheme allegedly involved concealing the identities of tankers transporting the oil by renaming and reflagging vessels, covering their names with paint or blankets, and disabling electronic tracking systems, as outlined by the Justice Department.

The complaint states that Torlak and his co-conspirators received tens of millions of dollars from PDVSA for their role in transporting Venezuelan oil. While the identities of his alleged co-conspirators were not disclosed, they were described as a Ukrainian national, an employee of a China-based shipping company, and a tanker captain based in Türkiye.