* U.S. criminally charges FTC, one arrested in Miami

* SEC says two defrauded Venezuela owned Citgo and PDVH (Recasts with SEC charges)

By Grant McCool

NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - An executive and an employee of a broker-dealer firm were charged with defrauding Citgo Petroleum Corp, a subsidiary of PDV Holding Inc owned by Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA [PDVSAC.UL], court documents released on Wednesday show.

In a purported fraud possibly involving hundreds of millions of dollars, FTC Capital Markets Inc Chairman Guillermo Clamens and Nazly Cucunuba Lopez, also known as Lina Lopez, were criminally charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud.

A parallel civil complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that New York-based Clamens, 45, assisted by Lopez in the firm's Miami office "knowingly caused FTC to make unauthorized purchases of securities for Citgo's and PDV's FTC accounts" and prepared false statements.

The SEC complaint said Clamens and Lopez solicited a total of $560 million from Houston-based Citgo and PDV between April 2008 and November 2008. The pair invested the money in high-risk securities without the knowledge of those investors, instead of in low-risk securities.

A separate lawsuit by the companies in March accused the pair of creating a "slush fund" that they used "to finance self-interested, unauthorized and speculative trading in unregistered, risky, illiquid investments in which they had financial interests, the full extent of which remain unknown."

Representatives of FTC, which is a registered broker-dealer that also has an investment advisory business, did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.