Summary
The U.S. Justice Department has filed a complaint seeking court authorization to take ownership of the sanctioned oil tanker Skipper and nearly 2 million barrels of oil seized off Venezuela in December, the first formal step in a legal process aimed at permanently controlling the vessel and cargo, according to a filing reported by the Associated Press. The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to increase pressure on Venezuela by targeting access to oil revenues, particularly in the wake of the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the department would “deploy every legal authority at our disposal” to “completely dismantle and permanently shutter” operations that, in the Justice Department’s view, violate U.S. law. In her emailed statement, Bondi framed the effort as an end to what she described as secret financing of “regimes that pose clear threats to the United States.”
The Justice Department said the Skipper case is the first complaint it has filed to start the legal process to formally take control of one oil tanker that the U.S. has intercepted, the AP reported. The department has accused Venezuela of operating a shadow fleet of vessels that use false flags to smuggle illicit crude into global supply chains.
According to the department’s allegations, the Skipper moved oil from Iran and Venezuela “throughout the world” while flying false flags to hide its activities, and the Justice Department said that the revenue helped provide support to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. has designated the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization.
The AP reported that the Skipper seizure in December was described as part of an escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign. Following the tanker’s seizure, Maduro was arrested in a U.S. raid last month and transported to New York to face drug trafficking charges, the AP said. The Justice Department’s reporting package described Maduro as pleading not guilty, protesting his capture, and declaring himself “the president of my country.”
In response to the tanker seizure, Maduro called it an “act of international piracy,” according to the AP report. After Maduro’s capture, the AP said several vessels fled the coast of Venezuela despite a U.S. quarantine on sanctioned oil tankers, and U.S. forces tracked and interdicted some of those vessels, including as far away as the Indian Ocean, in the administration’s efforts to disrupt illicit shipments.
The Justice Department’s filing also reflects broader U.S. moves toward managing where Venezuela’s oil revenue flows. The AP reported that the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil while also beginning to lift broad sanctions to allow foreign companies to operate in Venezuela as part of an effort to revitalize the country’s oil industry.
In the next stage of the case, a judge in federal court in Washington must sign off on the U.S. government’s bid to permanently take ownership of the Skipper and its cargo so the oil can potentially be sold. In a statement carried by the AP, A. Tysen Duva, who leads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said the actions helped remove a “ghost tanker” that had “for years” moved illicit oil from Iran and Venezuela.