Raheem J. Brennerman

Raheem Jefferson Brennerman (born 1978) (also known as Raheem Jefferson Soe-Tan Jr. Brennerman) is an Energy and real estate business magnate, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He currently serves as the chairman for RJB Capital, and its core businesses, The Blacksands Pacific Group, BSP Technologies and BLV Group Corporation. He is also the Chair & Co-Trustee for Brennerman Family Foundation Trust and the principal of Brennerman Family Holdings and The House of Brennerman Holdings.

Life
Born in 1978, Brennerman grew up living in New York city and then in both London and Switzerland. Brennerman's father was an American businessman but he was primarily raised by his mother, an international businesswoman, a diamond broker and textile trader. His step-father, an American banker and businessman of Nigerian descent, also partly raised him and introduced him to the oil trading business on the African continent. Brennerman was admitted at the age of sixteen to one of Europe's most prestigious colleges at the University of London, where he earned his bachelor's degree with honors in Economics at the top of his class and later achieved a master's degree from Columbia University. He started his career in Investment Banking at J. P. Morgan Chase & Co with focus on mergers and acquisition in the U.S. and European markets.

In 2004 Brennerman founded BLV Group Corporation (a real estate and lifestyle company) and in April 2010 founded an oil and gas company, Blacksands Pacific Group, one of only three black owned energy business in the United States. On leaving J. P. Morgan Chase & Co and prior to establishing his businesses, Brennerman worked for the family energy business, which was started by his paternal grandfather in Louisiana.

Brennerman also managed his family-owned real estate business and investments, established by his maternal grandparents.

Companies
In 2004, Brennerman founded BLV Group Corporation, a real estate investment, management and development company which was previously based in New York with assets in Europe, Africa and Asia. The company focuses primarily on luxury condominiums, ultra luxury lifestyle hotels and spas and digital real estate. Under the essenza style brand, it provides lifestyle services from bespoke interior design to dedicated concierge services and more.

In 2010, Brennerman founded Blacksands Pacific, an international oil and gas exploration and production company which was previously headquartered in Los Angeles and with assets in North America and Africa. Originally an energy trading company marketing crude oil and petroleum products. The company expanded to focus on exploration and production. Blacksands Pacific now also transports, stores, purchases and markets crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids, and bitumen. Currently operating in nine countries, Blacksands Pacific has announced that it is investing significantly in E&P and midstream oil and gas projects in Nigeria and Cote D' Ivoire and has entered into joint ventures in mining and infrastructure projects, including distributing gas between African countries. In an interview with LEADERS magazine in October 2014, Brennerman revealed that Blacksands Pacific had experienced significant growth especially in exploration and production, but that it is divesting its smaller interest assets in order to focus on larger assets that the company was acquiring, such as assets in the Gulf of Mexico that are expanding to produce over 100,000 barrels by 2019.

Advocacy
Brennerman has been a vocal advocate of the US oil and gas industries' investments in Africa, claiming that US expertise and technology is helping to build long-term capacity in Africa to the benefit of local businesses and communities. He has pressed the US Government to spend more on shale oil and gas infrastructure in order to create more jobs and ultimately raise tax revenues, lower manufacturing costs and generate less reliance on energy imports. Brennerman has also called for the US Government to lift the export ban on crude oil to help stimulate investment, create jobs and stabilize global energy markets. Other issues that Brennerman has written about in the media include the importance of the Gulf of Mexico as a continuing source of hydrocarbons and the need for oil and gas producers in the GCC countries to increase their investment in shale oil and gas exploration and technology.

Legal Controversy
In 2014, ICBC (London) plc, a British subsidiary of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, headquartered in Beijing, China, brought a civil lawsuit against The Blacksands Pacific Group, Inc., a Delaware-based oil and gas development company founded by Brennerman, in an endeavor to recoup $5 million out of the $20 million bridge finance provided to the company to cover expenses incurred by the company when the bank reneged on the negotiated US$1.35 billion oil and gas financing.

In 2016, the judge who presided over the civil lawsuit invited ICBC (London) plc to pursue Brennerman personally for discovery even though he was not a party to the civil lawsuit and no subpoena, motion to compel or order to show cause had been issued to him. By December 2016, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan improperly pierced through the corporate veil of the company, Blacksands Pacific, to hold Brennerman in civil contempt for failure to satisfy the discovery request direct at the company, then referred him and the company to the Manhattan federal prosecutors for criminal prosecution.

In 2017, Brennerman was arrested at his Las Vegas home for criminal contempt of court and granted bail by Chief Judge Colleen McMahon. Brenneran was arrested again and indicted for conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, bank fraud and wire fraud related to the transaction between ICBC (London) plc and The Blacksands Pacific Group, Inc.

In September 2017, Brennerman was convicted of criminal contempt of court and in December 2017, he was convicted of the fraud charges. A year later at the end of 2018, he was sentenced to prison and went to federal low security prison in 2019. Brennerman has maintained that he is innocent, that he was wrongly convicted and imprisoned, that key evidence was intentionally withheld, that evidence was intentionally misrepresented, that the judges acted improperly and that his human rights to a fair trial as well as his Constitutional rights were not afforded to him. Brennerman has requested for both the British Government and members of U.S. Congress from New York to advocate on his behalf as part of his campaign to clear his name.

According to Court filings, Brennerman highlighted that he was deprived of his right to a fair trial in both the criminal contempt and fraud trials because he was deprived of the critical evidence - ICBC files, which he required for his complete defense at both trials, that Judge Richard J. Sullivan made factually and legally flawed rulings by misrepresenting evidence to wrongly convict and imprison him and that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, having shielded the jury from considering key evidence - ICBC files, then permitted the presentment of the erroneously adjudged civil contempt order to sway the jury in the criminal contempt of court trial, which significantly prejudiced him.