Venezuela jails officials for giving US oil data

CARACAS: Venezuela jailed two officials from the state oil company PDVSA for five years for providing the US with “strategic and sensitive” details of its sanctions-hit oil operations, prosecutors said Friday.

Alfredo Chirinos, the company’s special operations chief, and Aryenis Torrealba, PDVSA’s general manager of crude operations, were arrested last year.

They “were sentenced to five years in prison for the crime of disclosing, reserving or supplying information,” said a statement signed by the attorney general, Tarek William Saab. The court relied on witness testimony and “documentary” evidence. According to the ruling, both former executives handled information on fuel oil inventories and the “refining system, as well as the routes of ships that traded with PDVSA.”