The former chief executive officer of a Puerto Rican international bank pleaded guilty Thursday to leading a scheme that fraudulently obtained at least $24.9 million from the institution and to conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions tied to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, the Justice Department announced.

Tomás Niembro Concha, 64, of Miami, entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to court filings in the Southern District of Florida. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for June 8.

Niembro served as chief executive of Nodus International Bank, a Puerto Rican international bank that failed in 2023. Prosecutors said he conspired with board Chairman Juan Ramirez and others to siphon funds from the bank while concealing conflicts of interest from fellow board members, executives and the bank’s regulator, the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico.

According to court documents, from 2017 to 2023, Niembro and Ramirez caused the bank to invest $11 million in a Miami-based lender so those funds could be loaned back to the two men for their personal benefit. Between January 2018 and September 2021, the pair also fraudulently induced Nodus Bank’s board to purchase at least 47 promissory notes totaling approximately $25.3 million from Nodus Finance, a Miami-based company they jointly owned, prosecutors said.

When the bank’s regulator moved to place it into liquidation in March 2023, Niembro and Ramirez fraudulently caused Nodus Bank to accept a loan portfolio from Nodus Finance to cover the debt from those promissory notes, according to the Justice Department.

Prosecutors also said that between 2021 and 2023, Niembro conspired to conduct prohibited transactions with an individual designated by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control as a Specially Designated National for providing material support to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., known as PDVSA. While the bank obtained OFAC authorization to foreclose on the individual’s Southampton, New York, home to satisfy a roughly $2.5 million loan, Niembro separately arranged to sell the property back to the sanctioned individual through a front company for $4 million — a transaction prosecutors said was strictly prohibited under U.S. sanctions law.