Eddie Koch
South Africa’s “oil baron” Marino Chiavelli earned US$7,5-million a month for brokering a clandestine deal in 1980 that ensured thousands of barrels of oil a day was shipped into South Africa in contravention of the international embargo.
This is one of the details contained in the new book Embargo: Apartheid’s Oil Secrets Revealed that is due to be released in Holland on Monday. It promises to reveal new details of clandestine violations of the oil embargo against apartheid South Africa and efforts by Umkhonto we Sizwe guerillas to blow up strategic fuel refineries in the seventies and eighties.
The book, published by the Dutch-based Shipping Research Bureau, describes how Chiavelli contacted members of Sasol and the Strategic Fuel Fund in 1979 to broker covert shipments of Saudi Arabian oil to South Africa.
The “Lucina Contract”, as this deal became known, ensured that 120 000 barrels of oil per day was shipped to the apartheid state and “Chiavelli received a US$7,5-million per month for oil that had found its way to South African ports”, says a chapter entitled “Drive Now And Pay Forever — The Apartheid Way”.
The book says: “None of this income was ever declared or brought into South Africa (which) must have been one of the biggest tax cons in South Africa if not the world. Mr Chiavelli had informed the Italians as well as the British that he was a permanent resident in South Africa and that he was paying tax here, and the South African taxman was quite happy that he was paying tax in the region of R1 000.”
Other chapters examine guerilla campaigns led by Umkhonto we Sizwe and the role that superspy Craig Williamson played in breaching the oil embargo against Pretoria.