24 November 2008

Request for Letter of Credit in the sum of $3,420,000 in favour of Pualaka Petroleo Fuel

Reference: 239 MoF/DA/09/08 Letter dated 23 September 2008

To: The Director of the East Timor Treasury, Manuel Monteiro.

From: The Director of the East Timor Department of Finance Procurement Services, Francisco da Costa Soares.

Subject: Request for the issuance of a letter of credit in the sum of $3,420,000 in favour of Pualaka Petroleo Fuel for the supply of deisel fuel to the East Timor Electricity authority and 2 months floating barge rental.

A document purporting to be a copy of this letter may be viewed at https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/timor-pualaka.pdf

It is believed that the corporate entity known as Pualaka Petroleo Fuel is associated with the husband of the East Timor Minster of Justice.

It is believed that a public tender process was not implemented for this procurement.

1 comment:

N Sustainable said...

The request was made on September 23. We are now two months later. Are there any indications that the Letter of Credit was issued.

Also, since the ulimate recipient of any funds is the seller, Pualaka Petroleo Fuel can only avail itself of the LC if the LC is transferable to a seller, if the LC is used as collateral for a back to back LC (to the benefit of the seller).

Finally, of great interest would it be to see what the types of documents were to trigger payment. If the LC were to merely request a statement from the beneficiary, that funds were needed, then if would be correct to label the instrument as a bank guarantee.

Despite these techicalities: always infuriating to see the impudence of corruption.