Jul

21

Platte River Associates Mystery Deepens

Posted by at 3:54 pm on July 21, 2008
Category: Criminal Penalties • Cuba Sanctions
Oil in Cuba
ABOVE: Cuban oil well

Last week we reported on criminal charges filed against a Colorado software company for violating the Cuba embargo. We had hoped to see the criminal information when it became public because the charges seemed, well, a little bit fishy. Now it appears, according to this article in Boulder’s Daily Camera, that the criminal information won’t be made public until a “change of plea” hearing takes place in October. The company had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges.

That article also gives a fair amount of detail about the facts leading to the indictment including claims by the defense attorneys that the company had no direct dealings with the Cuban government:

Foreman, an attorney with Denver-based Haddon Morgan Mueller Jordan Mackey & Foreman, said Thursday that the allegations stem from Platte River’s work in 2000 with Repsol, a Spanish oil and gas company.

He said the Boulder company sold its software program, which analyzes seismic and other ground data to assist in determining potential places to drill for oil, to Repsol in 2000.

A couple of months later, a Repsol employee came to Boulder for further training on using the software, Foreman said. At that time, a Platte River representative recognized that the seismic data looked as if it related to the Caribbean and Cuba, he said.

“I have no idea whether or not Repsol ultimately did anything with Cuba utilizing that software,” Foreman said.

This is all pretty attenuated as a basis for a criminal indictment. Platte River sold software to a Spanish company that then fed data into the program relating to areas around Cuba. Is Microsoft going to go to jail for selling Excel to a Canadian company that then uses the program to analyze its sales figures, including sales to Cuba? It strikes me that you don’t have criminal activity unless it can be demonstrated that Platte River knew that the software was going to be used to aid drilling in Cuba and was in fact later used to aid drilling in Cuba. Short of that, “no cigar,” as they say.

That being said, the mystery about this case only deepens. The change of plea hearing suggests that the defendants are now going to plead guilty and that some sort of plea agreement has been reached. But why would anyone plead guilty on the facts as they appear so far?

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Copyright © 2008 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)

One Comment:

Please publish this comment anonymously. The reason for this request is because of concern over government agencies’ persecution in this matter.

There is much more to the story than meets the idea and it is worthy of a first rate investigative reporter’s attention from a major national newspaper. The basic story line is that a government agency got involved in this case sensing a “big fish” in an attempt to find national security issues in the feeding frenzy for such matters following 9/11. When that situation did not materialize, and when the government realized that this was not a national security matter, rather than admit a mistake, the government agency dug its heals in deeper, and decided to continue to prosecute, despite the lack of seriousness of the situation. The answer to your blog question as to “why would someone plea guilty” is easy to understand. (1) To get the government prosecutors off one’s back from pursuing these frivolous charges, and (2) to permit these government agencies, who have wasted MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on this matter, to “save face” so that the matter can be ended.

Comment by Anonymous on October 8th, 2008 @ 10:17 am