Maltese restaurant that changed name to avoid US sanctions is back on blacklist

Scoglitti restaurant changed its name to avoid US sanctions blacklist over its owner Darren Debono's arrest in Italy over fuel smuggling charges but now its replacement, Porticello, has also been blacklisted 

The restaurant's name was changed to Porticello in April
The restaurant's name was changed to Porticello in April

The US Treasury Department has updated its sanctions list to reflect a change in the name of a blacklisted Maltese restaurant.

The restaurant, which originally went by the name Scoglitti, belonged to former national footballer and alleged fuel smuggler Darren Debono, was blacklisted by the US back in February.

Debono was one of four Maltese individuals and companies hit by sanctions related to fuel smuggling out of Libya. He remains under house arrest in Catania.

The restaurant had been closed since Debono was arrested in Catania on charges of fuel smuggling in October last year, but reopened in April this year, having changed its name to Porticello.

MaltaToday was unable to establish whether Debono still retains the trading licence of the new restaurant, or whether it has passed on to a close associate.

Debono was arrested in October following an investigation by Italian police into a racket where Libyan ‘smuggling king’ Fahmi Bin Khalifa supplied smuggled Libyan fuel through Debono’s ships, to an Italian merchant.

Debono is believed to have used his fleet of fishing vessels to transport the smuggled fuel out of Libya so that it could be sold in Italian ports. The crime syndicate included Maltese businessman Gordon Debono, who was arrested in Catania, and Nicola Orazio Romeo, said to be a Siclian Mafia associate.

The trade blacklist by the US Treasury Department’s office of foreign asset control hit Darren Debono, Gordon Debono, Rodrick Grech and Terence Micallef in a list of six individuals, 24 companies and seven vessels. They included Debono’s vessels, the Maltese companies that acted as clearing houses for the oil transhipments, as well as Scoglitti.

The €30-million fuel racket was dismantled by Italian police investigators who had been intercepting phone-calls from Darren Debono for two years.

He is suspected of having been the crucial link that made possible the transportation of smuggled Libyan oil to Italian markets.