Two former employees of a New York broker-dealer pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiring to pay kickbacks to Venezuelan state banking officials, as U.S. prosecutors moved to broaden their case. Tomas Alberto Clarke Bethancourt, 43, and Ernesto Lujan, 50, admitted to participating in the conspiracy to help secure trading business for their employer, Direct Access Partners. Federal prosecutors in New York previously said Direct Access Partners made more than $60 million in fees from trading business allegedly directed to it by an official at Caracas-based Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social de Venezuela, known as Bandes. But the case has now expanded as Thursday's pleas linked Direct Access to a second state-owned bank, San Cristobal-based Banfoandes, which the Venezuela government shut down in 2009. In court, Clarke, a former executive vice president at the broker-dealer in its Miami office, said that, by 2009, he had been aware that some fees that Direct Access paid to a foreign
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