Johannes Christiaan Martinus Augustinus Maria "John" Deuss (born 28 August 1942) is a Dutch trader and convicted criminal who broke sanctions by selling oil to the apartheid regime of South Africa and owned a bank which permitted carousel fraud.
At the age of 25, Deuss became a commodity trader, entering the oil market with his company JOC Oil. [1] An initial deal was to buy kerosene from Jacques Detiger and sell it at profit. [2] He signed a contract in 1976 with the USSR's national oil company Soujuznefteexport to export crude over a number of years. The deal broke down in controversial circumstances after Deuss sold 39 consignments but only paid for the first six. Years of litigation followed, with hearings in the Bermuda Supreme Court, the Bermuda Court of Appeal and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. [3] : 66 [4]
Deuss moved to Bermuda and in 1973 set up the First Curaçao International Bank (FCIB) in the Antilles. [5] [6] JOC Oil was located in Bermuda for tax reasons and made deals globally in places such as Cuba, Denmark, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Malta, Mexico, Taiwan and Zaire. Deuss employed former CIA agent Theodore Shackley as a risk analyst. [5]
Since JOC Oil was embroiled in legal difficulties, Deuss created a new company, Transworld Oil. [3] : 66 In 1984, The Observer revealed that Deuss had broken the United Nations sanctions imposed on trade with apartheid South Africa. [7] He was shipping Soviet and Iranian oil to South Africa using stealth and deception until in 1987 Transworld announced it had stopped supplying the apartheid regime. [8] [9] A castle he owned in the Netherlands, in the village of Berg en Dal, was firebombed in protest by a group called Pyromaniacs against Apartheid. [7] [6] Researcher Steve LeVine later estimated that Deuss had made between $280 million and $500 million from these deliveries. [10] The Shipping Research Bureau tracked the shipments at the time and after South African archives were declassified, the statistics showed that Deuss and Transworld Oil had supplied over half of South Africa's oil in 1982. [3] : 89
In early 1988, Deuss attempted to corner the global oil market. Having conferred with Mana Al Otaiba, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources of the United Arab Emirates, and gained an assurance that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) would reduce production, Deuss bought up almost all crude shipments from the Brent oilfield for $425 million. He expected oil prices to rise since he controlled the available supply, but Shell and Exxon had secretly teamed up to organise extra shipments; Shell trader Peter Ward said "Deuss is a buccaneer [...] Let's teach him a lesson". [11] When Shell leaked their plan to the media, Deuss realised he had been outmanouevred and was forced to sell the shipments at a loss of $600 million. [11]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Deuss saw an opportunity for profit in Kazakhstan. He proposed selling oil from the Tengiz Field to Chevron Corporation, via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. As president of the Oman Oil Company, Deuss negotiated with the Kazakh and Russian governments to set up the consortium, but Chevron refused to negotiate with him and was backed by the US government. [12] Eventually, Russia dropped its support for Deuss and he stepped away so that the project could continue. [13]
In 2006, his Dutch castle was raided and he was arrested then extradited from Bermuda to the Netherlands to face charges of receiving stolen goods, running a criminal organization and money laundering. [6] In a co-investigation, Dutch prosecutors had requested an international arrest warrant after British police had observed that everyone arrested in the previous two years for carousel fraud had been a customer of the FCIB. The fraud was estimated to cost around £30 billion across Europe every year. The bank was raided in Willemstad and had its assets frozen, whilst people (including Deuss' sister Tineke) were arrested in England, the Netherlands and Wales. [6] [7] Deuss was convicted of banking without a license and not reporting unusual transactions, which resulted in a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of 327,000 euros. [14] In 2013, Deuss and his sister paid a settlement of 35 million euros to the Dutch authorities and in 2020, they paid an undisclosed amount to the Public Prosecution Service in Curaçao. [6]
Johannes Christiaan Martinus Augustinus Maria Deuss, known as John Deuss, was born in Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1942. [3] : 64–65 Deuss took an interest in show jumping, breeding horses in Bermuda and also Connecticut and Florida. [8]
Aruba, officially the Country of Aruba, is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, situated in the south of the Caribbean Sea. Aruba is located approximately 29 kilometres (18 mi) north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná and 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Curaçao.
The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country consisted of several island territories located in the Caribbean Sea. The islands were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the autonomous successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies. The Antilles were dissolved in 2010. The Dutch colony of Surinam, although relatively close by on the continent of South America, did not become part of the Netherlands Antilles but became a separate autonomous country in 1954. All the island territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the kingdom today, although the legal status of each differs. As a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status. People from this former territory continue to be called Antilleans in the Netherlands.
Curaçao, officially the Country of Curaçao, is a Lesser Antilles island in the southern Caribbean Sea and Dutch Caribbean region, about 65 km (40 mi) north of Venezuela. It is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Willemstad is the capital and largest city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was the capital of the Netherlands Antilles prior to its dissolution in 2010. The historic centre of the city consists of four quarters: the Punda and Otrobanda, which are separated by the Sint Anna Bay, an inlet that leads into the large natural harbour called the Schottegat, as well as the Scharloo and Pietermaai Smal quarters, which are across from each other on the smaller Waaigat harbour. Willemstad is home to the Curaçao synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. The city centre, with its unique architecture and harbour entry, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Papiamento or Papiamentu is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on the Caribbean ABC islands.
Peter Richard Dreyer is a South African American writer. He is the author of A Beast in View, The Future of Treason, A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank, Martyrs and Fanatics: South Africa and Human Destiny, and most recently the novel Isacq. His recent essays and poetry can be found in "A Desk-Drawer Anthology". Dreyer was born and brought up in South Africa, where he was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, serving on the Cape Provincial Committee of the Liberal Party, founded and led by Alan Paton, and as secretary of the Western Province Press Association, which published the fortnightly The Citizen, which introduced the concept of nonracial democracy in South Africa. At the time, the Liberal Party was the only unsegregated political party in South Africa. The African National Congress (ANC) restricted its membership to black Africans, and did not desegregate itself until many years later. Dreyer put forward the idea of nonracialism in a pamphlet titled Against Racial Status and Social Segregation. The Citizen Group also worked to establish nonracial trade unions, resistance to bus apartheid in Cape Town, and a nonracial theater project, which led to a production of Jean Genet's The Blacks. On February 8, 1958, Patrick Duncan launched the Liberal Party fortnightly Contact, with offices on Parliament Street in Cape Town. Dreyer worked closely with Duncan, and in Contact, 1, no. 15, dated August 23, 1958, he published an article about the newly formed nonracial South African Meat Workers Union under the by-line “Contact Special Correspondent.” On the cover of the magazine, Duncan placed the Citizen group slogan “Forward to a South African patriotism based on non-racial democracy”—the first prominent demand for a nonracial answer to apartheid.
China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corporation Ltd (CAO) is the largest purchaser of jet fuel in the Asia Pacific region and supplies jet fuel to the civil aviation industry of the People's Republic of China (PRC). CAO supplies to the three key international airport in the PRC, i.e. Beijing Capital International Airport, Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, and accounts for more than 90% of PRC's jet fuel imports. CAO also engages in international trading of jet fuel and other oil products such as fuel oil and gas oil. CAO owns investments in strategic oil-related businesses, which include Shanghai Pudong International Airport Aviation Fuel Supply Company Ltd and China National Aviation Fuel TSN-PEK Pipeline Transportation Corporation Ltd.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) is a consortium and an oil pipeline to transport Caspian oil from Tengiz field to the Novorossiysk-2 Marine Terminal, an export terminal at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It is one of the world's largest pipelines and a major export route for oil from the Kashagan and Karachaganak fields. The CPC pipeline transfers about 1% of global oil supply and handles almost all of Kazakhstan's oil exports. In 2021, the pipeline exported up to 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Kazakhstan's main crude grade, light sour CPC Blend, which represented 80% of Kazakhstan's total oil production of 1.6 million bpd.
Missing trader fraud involves the theft of Value Added Tax (VAT) from a government by fraudsters who exploit VAT rules, most commonly the European Union VAT rules which provide that the movement of goods between member states is VAT-free. There are different variations of the fraud but they generally involve a trader charging VAT on the sale of goods and absconding with the VAT. The term "missing trader" is used because the fraudster has gone missing with the VAT.
Atlantic Petroleum was an oil company in the Eastern United States headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a direct descendant of the Standard Oil Trust. It was also one of the companies that merged with Richfield Oil Corporation to form the "AtlanticRichfield Co.", later known as ARCO.
The history of Curaçao starts with settlement by the Arawaks, an Amerindian people coming from the South American mainland. They are believed to have inhabited the island for many hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans.
Trafigura is a multinational commodity trading company domiciled in Singapore with major regional hubs in Geneva, Houston, Montevideo and Mumbai, founded in 1993. The company trades in base metals and energy. It is the world's largest private metals trader and second-largest oil trader having built or purchased stakes in pipelines, mines, smelters, ports and storage terminals.
Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. The current company was created through a merger of Glencore with Xstrata on 2 May 2013. As of 2015, it ranked tenth in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Glencore International was ranked as the 484th-largest public company in the world. As of July 2022, it is the world's largest commodity trader. In 2023, the company was ranked 59th in the Forbes Global 2000.
Gunvor Group Ltd is a multinational energy commodities trading company registered in Cyprus, with its main trading office in Geneva, Switzerland. Gunvor also has trading offices in Singapore, Houston, Stamford, London and Dubai, with a network of representative offices around the globe. The company operates in the trade, transport, storage and optimization of petroleum and other energy products, as well as having investments in oil terminal and port facilities. Its operations consist of securing crude oil and petroleum products upstream and delivering it to market via pipelines and tankers. Gunvor has a separate company, Nyera, set up in 2021 to invest in renewable energy sources. It is run by energy transition director Fredrik Tornqvist.
Vitol is a Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy and commodity trading company that was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 by Henk Viëtor and Jacques Detiger. Though trading, logistics and distribution are at the core of its business, these are notably complemented by refining, shipping, terminals, exploration and production, power generation, and retail businesses. Vitol has over 40 offices worldwide, with its largest operations in Geneva, Houston, London, and Singapore.
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Leandro Jones Johan Bacuna is a professional footballer who plays as a midfielder or right-back for Eerste Divisie club Groningen. Bacuna was capped 20 times at youth levels for the Netherlands and also represented the Netherlands Antilles at youth level. Bacuna plays for the Curaçao national team, the successor side to the Netherlands Antilles, and won the Caribbean Cup with the side in 2017.
The history of Dutch slavery involves slavery in the Netherlands itself, as well as the establishment of slavery outside the Netherlands in which it played a role. The Netherlands banned the slave trade in 1814 after being compelled by Britain.
Ciro Domenico Kroon was an Curaçao politician and businessman. He served as Minister of Social and Economic Affairs from 1957 until 1968, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands Antilles from 1968 until 1969. The 1969 Curaçao uprising caused the collapse of his government.