High seas heist or victory for US sanctions on Venezuela? U.S. federal marshals will auction 100,000 barrels of gasoline purchased by Venezuelan businessman Wilmer Ruperti. A fellow shipping magnate who owns Greece's top soccer club refused delivery.
In this April 29, 2020 photo, Venezuelan shipping magnate Wilmer Ruperti smokes a cigarette during an interview in Caracas, Venezuela. As a result of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, a high-stakes legal fight in U.S. federal court is pitting Ruperti against Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis, in connection with oil tanker Alkimos carrying high octane gasoline estimated to be worth millions.
“This clearly demonstrates that sanctions work,” said Russ Dallen, who closely monitors maritime traffic as the head of Miami-based Caracas Capital Markets. “But although this shipowner appears to have done the right thing, there are lots of other unscrupulous cockroaches in the shipping industry that won’t hesitate to do business with Venezuela.”
Moreover, ES Euroshipping AG, the Swiss-registered company that chartered the Alkimos, was owned by Ruperti, a businessman connected to Venezuela’s government. Capital’s chairman, Marinakis, is the owner of football clubs Olympiakos in Greece and Nottingham Forest in England. In the case of the Alkimos, its owners suspected something was amiss. So its lawyers pressed ES Euroshipping for additional information, pointing out that the contract contained a “sanctions clause” giving the shipowner “absolute discretion” to refuse to carry out any trade that it deems exposes it, or its crew, to U.S. sanctions.
“URGENT responses to the above are requested. The matter is most serious,” the Alkimos’ broker wrote shortly before its schedule arrival off Aruba on April 11.
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