[lbo-talk] WSJ:Wealthiest Venezuelan Supports Chaves

[Cseniornyc at aol.com]

Venezuelan High Life: 
Bulletproof BMW 

And a Vote for Chávez


Oil Tycoon Ruperti Supports  
Socialist's Re-Election; 
Gift of Bolívar's Pistols
By JOSÉ DE  CÓRDOBA
December 1, 2006; Page A1

CARACAS, Venezuela --  Most of Hugo Chávez's supporters live in shantytowns 
and count on subsidies from  the government. Most of his opponents live in 
middle-class apartment buildings  and mansions in leafy neighborhoods and are 
horrified by the likelihood of a  Chávez victory in Sunday's presidential election.

Then there are people  like shipping tycoon Wilmer Ruperti, who tools around 
town in a chauffeur-driven  bulletproof BMW and who owes much of his fortune 
to the Chávez government. Along  with other, well-connected businessmen, known 
as Boliburgueses --  Bolivarian bourgeoisie -- Mr. Ruperti is rooting for 
Chávez's  re-election.

At his office a few days ago, the 46-year-old Mr. Ruperti, a  gregarious, 
bearlike man with thinning, red-tinted hair and a thick gold chain,  pored over a 
poll he says he commissioned for about $60,000 that showed Mr.  Chávez 
winning comfortably. "I agree with the president," said Mr. Ruperti. "He  is the 
only person who has identified himself with the poor."

As an oil  trader, Mr. Ruperti hit the big time in 2003 when he came to the 
rescue of Mr.  Chávez's government, which was then fighting to survive a strike 
that had shut  down the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA. 
With the country  running out of gasoline, Mr. Ruperti used his fleet of 
tankers to unload fuel  oil in Venezuelan ports, showing frightened insurers that 
they were secure. That  opened the way for other tankers to bring in gasoline, 
which Mr. Ruperti bought  and then resold to PDVSA, breaking the back of the 
strike. A grateful Mr. Chávez  decorated Mr. Ruperti with the army's Star of 
Carabobo medal.

Now Mr.  Ruperti embodies the contradictions of Chávez-era Venezuela -- a 
country that is  dedicated to socialist redistribution of wealth, but which is 
also enjoying an  oil-backed capitalist boom that is further dividing rich and 
poor.  Eighteen-year-old whiskeys are the rage, and Hummers and top-of-the-line 
SUVs  clog the streets of Caracas, while four out of 10 Venezuelans survive 
on $2 a  day or less.

These days, Mr. Ruperti, whose father, an Italian immigrant  who worked as a 
chef in restaurants here, cuts a wide swath in Caracas society.  Last year, he 
sponsored the event of the season -- a charity concert by tenor  Luciano 
Pavarotti, which succeeded in bringing together the Boliburgueses and  the 
anti-Chávez grand dames of Caracas society. A year earlier, he paid $1.7  million at 
a New York auction for a pair of ornate French pistols made by  Napoleon's 
gunsmith in 1804 for Simón Bolívar, Venezuela's independence hero.  Caracas 
gossip had it that Mr. Ruperti planned to present the pistols to Mr.  Chávez, who 
is so enamored of Bolívar that he changed Venezuela's name to the  Bolivarian 
Republic of Venezuela to honor his hero.

"Those pistols had to  be in the hands of Venezuelans," says Mr. Ruperti, who 
says he plans to leave  them to his children. "We have to rescue the 
Venezuelan-ness of our  people."

His critics hold up Mr. Ruperti's business practices as an  example of what 
has gone wrong in the country. This year, Transparency  International, the 
anticorruption watchdog, lists Venezuela as No. 141 out of  163 countries it 
surveys in its ranking of "perceived levels of  corruption."

Last year, a congressional commission dominated by members  of Mr. Chávez's 
party looked into allegations that Mr. Ruperti made millions  from 
double-billing the state oil company for gasoline shipments during the  strike at PDVSA 
when the company's accounting system broke down. The commission  also 
investigated whether Mr. Ruperti received sweetheart contracts to ship  asphalt with 
PDVSA's Citgo subsidiary in the U.S. The commission cleared the oil  trader. 
"Ruperti performed vital services for PDVSA, and he was paid for them,"  says 
Jesús Alberto García, the panel's president.

But the saga continues.  Earlier this year, Mr. Chávez's office sent a letter 
to Congress asking  lawmakers to take another look at the controversy. Among 
the issues the  president's office wants investigated: whether PDVSA lost $30 
million due to  double billing and bogus invoices by Mr. Ruperti, and whether 
he used "company  names without their knowledge for the fraudulent acquisition 
of fuel." Mr.  Ruperti denies any wrongdoing.

So far, the controversy hasn't had much  effect on his business. He now runs 
a 19-ship tanker fleet and says he plans to  start a maritime bank. Mr. 
Ruperti is also investing $26 million in a  cable-television station he wants to 
turn into a 24-hour news operation. "I'm  going to call it Channel I, I for 
intelligence, impartiality and information,"  he says, as the small TV screen in 
his BMW, tuned to the government station,  silently shows President Chávez 
exuberantly speaking to followers.

But  earlier this year, Venezuela's revolutionary contradictions took a bad 
bounce  for Mr. Ruperti, an avid golfer, when Caracas's Chavista mayor started 
legal  procedures to seize the Caracas Country Club's golf course and replace 
it with  public housing. The matter is still in court. "My heart tells me I 
don't agree  with that," says Mr. Ruperti, who has founded a golf school for 
children from  the city's barrios.

For many Venezuelans, Caracas's Dolce Vita of premium  wines, premium 
whiskeys and premium cars brings to mind Venezuela's first big  oil boom during the 
1970s, a time remembered as the years of "Saudi  Venezuela."

Then, President Carlos Andrés Pérez, who nationalized foreign  oil companies 
to create PDVSA in 1976, favored a clique of friends, known as the  "12 
Apostles," who made enormous fortunes through government contracts. Now,  says Ben 
Amí Fihman, the editor of a magazine called "Exceso," or Excess, "the  12 
Apostles have become the 40 thieves."

Today Caracas is as divided as  it was during the days of the oil strike. Mr. 
Ruperti's name heads the list of  "collaborators of the regime" posted on the 
Internet by "Democratic Soldiers,"  an organization of anti-Chávez officers 
purged from the armed forces. "Keep the  names ... and remember them for when 
it becomes necessary," the list says,  adding information about Mr. Ruperti's 
residence, friends, business dealings,  and where his private jet is parked.

"A lot of people think I'm a devil,  but it's not true," says Mr. Ruperti. "I 
sleep easily at night and morally I'm  satisfied." Nevertheless, Mr. Ruperti 
takes no chances. He rides in Caracas's  traffic-choked streets in his 
armor-plated car, accompanied by two South Korean  bodyguards, Yong Lee and Rim Paek. 
Mr. Ruperti says the Koreans are tae kwon do  masters who can brain an 
assailant with a butter knife at a distance of 20  meters.

"If one of my enemies comes in here tonight, I'll have them show  you," he 
joked before sitting down to dinner at the best Italian restaurant in  Caracas. 
After dinner, he left the restaurant through a back door. "For safety's  
sake," he said.

Write to José de Córdoba at _jose.decordoba at wsj.com_ 
(mailto:jose.decordoba at wsj.com) 1 
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