Amid Oceanographia Fraud Scandal, Grupo Pegaso Partners with POSH in Mexico

Image: POSH

PACC Offshore Services Holdings Ltd (POSH), Asia’s largest operator of offshore supply vessels announced today that Mexican conglomerate Grupo Pegaso has signed a term sheet for a position with their company’s joint ventures in Mexico which are involved in the owning and chartering of offshore support vessels.

Joint ventures in Mexico have been a huge thorn in the side of POSH this year however.

According to the company’s first quarter earnings statement, POSH recorded a $3.2 million loss due to “lower revenue in certain JVs and provision of doubtful debts by JVs in Mexico.”

The company appears to be referring to the scandal involving their joint venture partner Oceanographia which gained $585 million in loans from Citigroup’s Mexico unit, Banco Nacional de Mexico in order to charter 8 vessels from POSH.  Unfortunately, the collateral for the loans were fake invoices to PEMEX drawn up by Oceanographia.

On 21 May 2014, a court ordered PEMEX to halt charter hire payments to the six remaining vessels being operated by the Oceanographia – POSH joint venture known as Servicios Mar?timos Gosh, aka GOSH.

POSH was not specific regarding the details of the joint venture, but considering significant issues still linger surrounding the Oceanographia scandal, and the six vessels tied to it, this partnership today is noteworthy.

POSH is currently trading at S$1.14, or 1 cent below their 25 April IPO price of S$1.15.

We’ve reached out to POSH for further comment.

Subscribe for Daily Maritime Insights

Sign up for gCaptain’s newsletter and never miss an update

— trusted by our 108,975 members