A Swiss banker has pleaded guilty for his role in a money laundering scheme that saw $1.2bn embezzled from the Venezuelan state oil company.

Matthius Krull, a German citizen and resident of Panama, admitted he helped clients launder money obtained through bribery and fraud from Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) while he was a vice president at Swiss private bank Julius Bär.

The conspiracy began in December 2014 with the embezzlement of $600m (£470m) from PDVSA which is Venezueala’s primary source of income. The scheme ballooned to $1.2bn the following year, a statement from the US Justice Department said.

Mr Krull said that he attracted private clients from Venezuela to the bank including Francisco Convit Guruceaga and three unnamed alleged conspirators who were indicted on money laundering charges on 16 August.

Mr Krull admitted joining the conspiracy in 2016 when a co-conspirator contacted him to launder the illicit proceeds of the embezzlement scheme.

The group attempted to clean the money by buying property in Miami, Florida and also used “sophisticated false-investment schemes” to conceal that the source of the $1.2bn, the DOJ said.

Complicit in those schemes were money managers, brokerage firms, banks and real estate investment firms in the US and elsewhere, “operating as a network of professional money launderers”.

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Mr Krull’s plea comes after a complaint filed by the US Homeland Security Investigations team last month.

The Miami Herald reported that the unnamed co-conspirators mentioned in the complaint include Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and three of his stepsons.

The plea deal comes as Venezuela’s economy crumbles causing widespread shortages of essential medicines and food.

The alleged theft began just as the oil-rich nation’s once-thriving economy teetered on the edge of a cliff in 2014. As the price of oil collapsed the group of individuals began to syphon off money and move it out of the country which has since gone into freefall.

This week, Mr Maduro raised the minimum wage by 3,000 per cent and lopped five zeroes off the nation’s currency which has been made effectively worthless by hyperinflation.