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<P align=center><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=6 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="20"><B>Venezuelan High Life: <BR>Bulletproof BMW <BR>
<P align=left>And a Vote for Chávez</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#000000
size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"></B><BR><BR>Oil Tycoon Ruperti Supports
<BR>Socialist's Re-Election; <BR>Gift of Bolívar's Pistols<BR>By <B>JOSÉ DE
CÓRDOBA</B><BR>December 1, 2006; Page A1<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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 <I>Boliburgueses</I> --
Bolivarian bourgeoisie -- Mr. Ruperti is rooting for Chávez's
re-election.<BR><BR>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."<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR>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."<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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."<BR><BR>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."<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>"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.<BR><BR>"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.<B><BR><BR>Write to</B> José de Córdoba at <A
href="mailto:jose.decordoba@wsj.com">jose.decordoba@wsj.com</A>1</P>
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