Venezuelan shipowner Wilmer Ruperti has stepped in to help the country through a fuel shortage caused in part by the coronavirus.
Queues have been lengthening outside petrol stations, AP reported. Fuel imports have been restricted due to US sanctions against the government of Nicolas Maduro, which is now being hit by the coronavirus and the oil price war, paralysing domestic production.
Ruperti’s Maroil Trading billed state-owned oil company PDVSA last month for €12m ($13m) for the purchase of up to 250,000 barrels of 95-octane petrol, according to an invoice seen by AP.
The cargo was acquired from an undisclosed Middle Eastern country, according to two sources.
It is reportedly en route and should arrive in Venezuela in the coming days.
Ruperti declined to comment on the contract when contacted by AP.
Venezuela has said it is formulating a “special fuel supply plan” to restore stockpiles in the “shortest possible time".
Ruperti, a former tanker captain, has a track record of helping out the government at cricial times.
In 2002, the 60-year-old chartered Russian tankers to import petrol during a strike at PDVSA.
But these deals resulted in a fraud judgment against him in the UK in 2012, after Sovcomflot's Novoship subsidiary brought legal action.
Ruperti's Suramericana de Transportes de Petroleo owns a fleet of tankers and other vessels.
Novoship won a $59.2m High Court judgment against Ruperti in 2012, but struck a deal the next year that reduced the amount to $40m. As part of that agreement, Ruperti agreed to testify against private Russian shipowner Yuri Nikitin and former Novoship general manager Vladimir Mikhaylyuk in Novoship's fraud case against them.
