US seizes tanker linked to DPR oil tycoon near Venezuela – media
11 December 2025 13:48
The United States has seized the tanker The Skipper (formerly Adisa) off the coast of Venezuela, CBS News reports, citing three sources familiar with the operation, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
According to the sources, the operation began on Wednesday morning, shortly after the tanker left the Venezuelan port. The operation was carried out with the participation of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, helicopters, special operations forces, the U.S. Coast Guard and Marines. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi published a video of armed officers descending to the deck of the ship with a rope from a helicopter. According to her, the United States executed the arrest warrant because the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.” According to the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, the vessel transported oil to Asia from 2021 to 2022.
When asked about the fate of the oil, US President Donald Trump said: “We’re going to keep it.”
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, The Skipper was added to the sanctions lists back in 2022 for its participation in a large oil supply network that helped finance Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Hezbollah group. According to OFAC, the participants in the scheme mixed Iranian oil with raw materials of other origin in the port of Sharjah (UAE) and then sold it under false documents. The scheme involved 17 companies and 11 tankers. The U.S. Treasury indicated that the Adisa was part of a group of ships controlled by oil magnate Viktor Artemov. According to the Ukrainian newspaper Espreso, he is a Ukrainian and was born in Donetsk. According to Washington, companies associated with him could have been involved in the transportation of raw materials from Venezuela and Russia, as well as in the supply of fuel to the Russian-controlled “DPR.” Bloomberg recorded the involvement of Artemov’s fleet in operations to transship Russian oil on the high seas to conceal its origin.
The seized tanker is operated by Thomarose Global Ventures, a Nigerian-registered company owned by an entity linked to Artemov. The 333-meter-long vessel, built in 2005 under the name The Toyo, was one of the largest tankers in the world at the time of its commissioning. UANI, an organization that monitors the circumvention of the sanctions regime, claims that some of the vessels linked to Artemov were transporting Venezuelan oil, including the Adisa tanker.
The Ukrainian edition of Espreso called Artemov one of the pioneers of Ukrainian fuel retail: from 1998 to 2006, he headed the Alfa-Oil chain of 300 gas stations. He then moved to Switzerland, where he established Ava Petroleum Services together with German citizen Vitaly Weinstein and Swiss citizen Gregorio Fazzone. Weinstein was previously a member of a group of assistants to Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Granovsky, who was arrested in absentia by the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine on suspicion of organizing corruption schemes.
In 2019, the SBU opened criminal proceedings in which Artemov’s company was listed as a structure potentially involved in illegal fuel supplies to the DPR Ministry of Defense. The court indicated that the activities could have been conducted through Alfa Energy, Ukrainian Fuel Company Dnipro and Ava Petroleum Services.
Venezuelan government strongly condemns oil tanker attack
The Venezuelan government has strongly condemned the storming of an oil tanker off its coast by the US military. In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Caracas, the incident was described as “brazen robbery and an act of international piracy.”
“Now the real reasons for the ongoing aggression against Venezuela are becoming clear. It is not about migration. It is not about drug trafficking. It is not about democracy. It is not about human rights. It is always about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, resources that belong exclusively to the people,” the statement said.
Washington: Tanker carrying oil for terrorists
U.S. Justice Secretary Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel said the tanker was part of an illegal oil transportation network to support foreign terrorist organizations. According to Bondi, it was transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.
In recent months, the United States has significantly strengthened its presence in the Caribbean by deploying the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and at least eight other warships, as well as F-35 fighter jets.
Since the beginning of the fall, the US military has already carried out air strikes on at least 20 ships in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing more than 80 people. Washington believes that they were transporting drugs to the United States with the support of the Venezuelan authorities. Official Caracas believes that the purpose of the US military presence in the region is to change the political regime in the country.
