Renu­ka Singh

Any na­tion that as­sists Venezuela in avoid­ing em­bar­goes will face sweep­ing sanc­tions im­posed by the Unit­ed States.

The warn­ing comes from the US gov­ern­ment af­ter it be­came aware of re­ports that a ship­ment of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny fu­el that left Trinidad and To­ba­go’s shores for Aru­ba may have even­tu­al­ly been sent to Venezuela in de­fi­ance of US sanc­tions against that coun­try.

The Aruban re­fin­ery is linked to Cit­go, a sub­sidiary of the Venezue­lan state-owned oil com­pa­ny PDVSA and re­ports sur­faced last week that the fu­el car­go was shipped to Venezuala af­ter it ar­rived in Aru­ba.

As these re­ports con­tin­ue to swirl, a US State De­part­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive has told Guardian Me­dia that the Unit­ed States has warned oth­er na­tions against as­sist­ing em­bat­tled Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and his regime.

“The Unit­ed States has put for­eign in­sti­tu­tions on no­tice that they will face sanc­tions for be­ing in­volved in fa­cil­i­tat­ing il­le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions that ben­e­fit Nico­las Maduro and his cor­rupt net­work,” the rep­re­sen­ta­tive said.

“The Unit­ed States con­demns all at­tempts by Maduro and his sup­port­ers to steal re­sources from the Venezue­lan peo­ple.”

The lo­cal arm of the US Em­bassy’s Pub­lic Af­fairs Sec­tion was much more vo­cal about the pos­si­ble trans­fer of fu­el from T&T to Venezuela.

In re­sponse to ques­tions on Wednes­day, the US Em­bassy said that the “US gov­ern­ment was aware of re­ports in­di­cat­ing that a ship­ment of gaso­line from Trinidad and To­ba­go may have gone to Venezuela”.

It not­ed that if T&T is found to have as­sist­ed Venezuela in get­ting fu­el, it could open the coun­try up to US sanc­tions.

“In gen­er­al, en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als risk ex­po­sure to US sanc­tions by op­er­at­ing in the Venezue­lan oil sec­tor,” the US Em­bassy’s Pub­lic Af­fairs Sec­tion said.

“This re­mains true re­gard­less of how the trans­ac­tions with Venezuela are con­duct­ed, whether us­ing cur­ren­cy or in-kind ex­changes and with­out re­spect to whether such con­duct is oth­er­wise le­gal un­der an­oth­er coun­try’s laws.”

The US had im­posed sanc­tions on the Russ­ian owned Ros­neft Trad­ing S.A and its sub­sidiary, the Swiss-based TNK Trad­ing In­ter­na­tion­al, back in March for sup­port­ing Maduro. The US has al­so im­posed sanc­tions on Cuban com­pa­ny Cubamet­ales and its par­ent com­pa­ny Cor­po­ra­cion Panamer­i­cana and the Ital­ian-owned PB Tankers for op­er­at­ing in the Venezue­lan en­er­gy sec­tor.

On April 21, a ship­ment of ex­cess fu­el left Pointe-a Pierre and was sold and shipped to Aru­ba.

The Aruban re­fin­ery has been moth­balled since 2012 and was on­ly re­cent­ly trans­ferred from PDVSA to the Aruban gov­ern­ment af­ter US sanc­tions dried up cred­it lines for the Venezue­lan com­pa­ny. There have been un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed re­ports com­ing out of Venezue­lan me­dia that the fu­el was bound for Venezuela.

Ad­dress­ing this, the US Em­bassy said, “Some of the com­pa­nies en­gaged in the Venezue­lan oil trade busi­ness at­tempt to dis­guise the true na­ture of their busi­ness. These ac­tiv­i­ties help them evade US and oth­er coun­tries’ ef­forts to pre­vent cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties and to pre­serve as­sets for the ben­e­fit of the Venezue­lan peo­ple.”

The Em­bassy con­firmed that it will “ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gate all ef­forts by (Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las) Maduro and his sup­port­ers to cir­cum­vent US sanc­tions.

The Em­bassy added that the US gov­ern­ment will al­so take “ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion” against those de­ter­mined to be en­gaged in sanc­tion­able ac­tiv­i­ty as well as those found vi­o­lat­ing US sanc­tions.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to US rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny chair­man New­man George con­firmed a ship­ment of ex­cess fu­el left Trinidad on April 21 and was shipped to Aru­ba.

George con­firmed a Swiss-based com­pa­ny, ES Eu­ro Ship­ping S.A, con­tact­ed the Paria ex­ec­u­tive on March 28 to ne­go­ti­ate for the sale of the fu­el.

The prin­ci­pal of ES Eu­ro Ship­ping S.A is Wilmer Ru­per­ti, a Venezue­lan ship­ping ty­coon who is al­so linked to Maroil Trad­ing. Maroil Trad­ing had close ties with for­mer Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez and even re­port­ed­ly en­sured the coun­try re­ceived fu­el sup­plies in 2002.

Ru­per­ti, ac­cord­ing to George, was on­ly able to get 150,000 bar­rels of fu­el on April 21.

“We did our due dili­gence. Every­thing was above board,” George said in a tele­phone in­ter­view last Thurs­day.

“You have to un­der­stand that we buy in Jan­u­ary for Feb­ru­ary and we buy in Feb­ru­ary for March. When the re­stric­tions were im­posed, it meant we had ex­cess fu­el be­cause less peo­ple were trav­el­ling.”

There has al­so been spec­u­la­tion that Ru­per­ti bought fu­el from the US, stored it in tanks near the de­funct Petrotrin and then trans­ferred it to his ves­sel. But George said that was not true.

“We just don’t have the space to store fu­el for any­one. We need all the stor­age space we have,” he said.

Since it be­gan pur­su­ing the sto­ry, Guardian Me­dia has tried sev­er­al times to con­tact sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials for com­ment on the mat­ter, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young. How­ev­er, there has been no re­sponse forth­com­ing from ei­ther of them.

Guardian Me­dia sent the fol­low­ing ques­tions to Min­is­ter Young:

1. Has T&T fa­cil­i­tat­ed a ship­ment of fu­el to Aru­ba?

2. Was this dis­cussed dur­ing the vis­it with Venezue­lan VP Del­cy Ro­driguez last month?

3. Was the head of PDVSA Juan San­tana al­so at this meet­ing? Is this coun­try fa­cil­i­tat­ing fu­el ship­ments to Venezuela?

Young read the mes­sages but did not re­spond. He al­so de­clined calls to his mo­bile phone.

Guardian Me­dia sent the same ques­tions to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Don­na Cox and there was no re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent these ques­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley:

1. Is this some­thing that was arranged dur­ing the Del­cy Ro­drigues vis­it with you last month?

2. Was PDVSA pres­i­dent Juan San­tana al­so at that meet­ing?

3. Is T&T fa­cil­i­tat­ing ship­ments to Venezuela?

He al­so did not re­spond to those ques­tions and calls to his mo­bile went unan­swered.

Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get read mes­sages sent to him on the same is­sue but did not re­spond ei­ther.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to T&T Joseph Mod­el­lo said Row­ley’s con­tin­ued recog­ni­tion of Maduro’s regime was “deeply con­cern­ing”. The US recog­nis­es op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do.

Row­ley re­spond­ed to Mod­el­lo then, say­ing that he took “um­brage” to Mod­el­lo’s state­ments. He even crit­i­cised Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for al­so pub­licly sup­port­ing Guai­do over Maduro. He said then that if the Op­po­si­tion be­lieved it had to take in­struc­tions from the US Em­bassy, they should all leave the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment out of that.

The Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has walked a fine line of neu­tral­i­ty since the mas­sive so­cio-po­lit­i­cal col­lapse in Venezuela.

Who is Wilmer Ru­per­ti?

2002

Wilmer Ru­per­ti al­leged­ly played a piv­otal role in the Venezue­lan en­er­gy in­dus­try break­down in 2002/2003. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports at that time, he made oil tankers avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment. The pro­vi­sion made it pos­si­ble for then-pres­i­dent Hugh Chavez to sur­vive the then op­po­si­tion’s at­tempt to cut off Chavez rev­enue source.

2016

The ship­ping ty­coon con­firmed that he paid the le­gal fees for two of Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s nephews, who were charged in a Man­hat­tan court for con­spir­ing to im­port 800 kgs of co­caine in­to the US.

2019

Ru­per­ti in court over a sex-tape row af­ter he sued a debt col­lec­tor for al­leged­ly swap­ping con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments for a sex tape re­lat­ed to an­oth­er bil­lion­aire.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, Ru­per­ti’s com­pa­ny hired the debt col­lec­tor and gave him ac­cess to in­ter­nal doc­u­ments. Ru­per­ti then ac­cused the debt col­lec­tor of trad­ing sen­si­tive files.

2020

Ru­per­ti’s com­pa­ny Maroil Trad­ing billed PDVSA for the pro­vi­sion of 250,000 bar­rels of gaso­line.