LA PAZ, Bolivia (AFX) - Bolivian officials raided the offices of Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF in the eastern city of Santa Cruz on Friday, arresting a company attorney and seizing documents relating to the allegedly illegal sale of natural gas to Brazil.
Repsol lawyer Samuel Encinas was arrested by officials from the Santa Cruz state attorney general's office after the company refused to provide documentation of its contracts with Brazil's state-run oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, Attorney General Jose Centenaro said.
'This seizure was ordered by a judge,' Centenaro said.
Repsol is accused of signing secret contracts with Petrobras to sell Bolivian natural gas to Brazil at a price lower than the official rate agreed upon by the two countries.
Hydrocarbons Minister Andres Soliz has estimated that the alleged sales cost the Bolivian government $161 million.
Repsol's offices in Argentina were closed and the company did not immediately issue a statement. However, a Repsol official in Bolivia, who asked not to be named because the company had not authorized public comment, called the raid 'irregular and disproportionate' and said the contract in question was not secret and did no damage to Bolivia.
Brazil currently pays $4 per million British thermal units of Bolivian gas.
Since President Evo Morales nationalized his country's oil and gas industry on May 1, Bolivia's state energy company Yacimientos Petroleo Fiscales Bolivianos has sought to raise that price.
Negotiations between the two countries are expected to continue in September.
Named in the attorney general's investigation are Jose Maria Moreno, the former chief of Andina SA, a subsidiary of Repsol; Petrobras' Bolivia director Luiz Rodolfo Landim Machado; and Luiz Silva de Menezes, Petrobras' Bolivia head of gas and energy.
This is the second such investigation into Repsol since the nationalization.
In May, officials from the Santa Cruz attorney general's office entered the company's offices to arrest then-President Julio Gavito and operations manager Pedro Sanchez for illegally selling $9.2 million worth of crude oil in 2004 and 2005.
Gavito has since quit his post and returned to Spain, and the investigation is ongoing.
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