A former Westport oil and gas trader was sentenced Monday to 15 months in federal prison for participating in a yearslong scheme that funneled more than $1 million in bribes to officials at Brazil’s state-owned energy giant.
U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley in Bridgeport handed down the sentence to Glenn Oztemel, 66, who was also ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.
Federal prosecutors said Oztemel spent nearly eight years working with an intermediary to steer secret payments to Petrobras employees in exchange for nonpublic information. That intelligence — including competitors’ bids and confidential pricing data — helped his then-employers, Arcadia Fuels Ltd. and Freepoint Commodities LLC, win contracts to sell fuel oil to the Brazilian company.
Investigators found that the payments were masked as consulting fees and commissions channeled through a third-party agent, Eduardo Innecco. Authorities said Oztemel and his associates relied on personal email accounts, encrypted messaging, burner phones and aliases, and used coded terms such as “breakfast” and “freight deviation” to disguise the nature of the transactions.
A jury convicted Oztemel in September 2024 of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, conspiring to launder money, three substantive FCPA charges and two counts of money laundering.
The case stems from a broader federal probe involving Freepoint. The Stamford commodities firm admitted in 2023 that it paid bribes to Brazilian officials and agreed to a deferred prosecution deal requiring it to pay more than $98 million in penalties and forfeiture.
The FBI’s international corruption unit in Los Angeles led the investigation with assistance from federal prosecutors and authorities in Brazil, Latvia, Switzerland and Uruguay.
