Suspect in Operation Dirty Oil moving €2.8 million to wife’s offshore company

One of the oil traders implicated in a suspected €30 million diesel smuggling ring has been using offshore companies to move some €1.5 million to his own wife.

Gordon Debono is accused of using his company Petroplus to assist the trafficking of oil from Libya to Italy, together with former Malta international footballer Darren and smuggling king Fahmi Slim.

According to a report first revealed in The Shift, Gordon Debono obtained a decision from a Cypriot court to condemn a Belize company – Oil & Ship Consultancy (OSC) – to pay the Dubai company International Properties and Investment Ltd (IPIL) a total of €1.5 million as part of a debt between both companies.

As it turns out, IPIL’s ‘board of directors’ is represented by Gordon Debono’s wife Yvette, who entrusted lawyer Norval Desira to carry out proceedings in Malta by a resolution of 5 September, 2018.

On the other hand, Gordon Debono, as OSC’s managing director, appointed Robert Montalto as his lawyer, who is also representing him in a prohibitory injunction brought against the government over sanctions in the United Nations.

The Maltese courts were obliged to enforce the Cypriot court decision of July 2018, as per EU law.

According to the original decision, a loan agreement was created on 4 September, 2017 between OSC and IPIL, and after filing a court action in the district court of Paphos, the parties reached a court settlement for €1.5 million and 3.5% interest.

Yvette Debono acquired the Dubai company as a shell company in March 2018 from a corporate service provider. The loan agreement was created a month before Debono’s arrest in Sicily.

A second, similar case is now ongoing in the Maltese courts, to enforce another Cypriot court decision, brought by Yvette Debono’s IPIL against a BVI company, Marine Offshore Investments Ltd (MOIL), over a €1.3 million loan agreement also created on 4 September, 2017. The debt was recognized by the Limassol court in June 2018.

Originally, the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control issued sanctions on companies owned by Gordon Debono, but nether MOIL or OSC were identified in the first raft of sanctions.

These included Malta-based Petroplus Limited, The Business Centre Ltd., Inovest Ltd., KB Lines Limited, Motorcycle Art Ltd., Hi-Low Properties Ltd., Eleven Eighty Eight Limited, Malta Directories Ltd., Mr. Handyman Ltd., KB Investments Limited, Seabrass Limited, Tara Limited, Krakern Limited, Gorge Limited, S-Cape Yacht Charter Limited, S-Cape Limited, and Italy-based Petropark S.R.L.