Although his business acumen earned him the disdain of the PDVSA employees who went on strike and were later dismissed, Chávez decorated Ruperti with the Star of Carabobo, a Venezuelan medallion usually awarded to military officers for distinguished service.
The Venezuelan business news portal Descifrado.com reported in June 2006 that Ruperti was setting up a maritime investment fund, and was planning to raise $500m for the construction of eight new oil tankers.
In December 2006, The Wall Street Journal profiled Ruperti, who is of Italian ancestry, and quoted him as saying that he supported Chávez because he is “the only person who has identified himself with the poor”.
[3] At an unreported date, Ruperti bought two gold-plated Napoleonic-era pistols which were once owned by Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan-born Latin American 19th century independence leader, at an auction in New York, for $1.6m.
On 11 October 2016, Ruperti is said to have paid for the legal defence of two people accused of trying to smuggle cocaine to the United States from Haiti: Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, both nephews of the Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, wife of President Nicolas Maduro, Efraín and Franqui are represented by Randall W. Jackson, John T. Zach, Joanna Wright of the legal firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP; and David M. Rody, Michael D. Mann, Elizabeth Espinosa, from Sidley Austin LLP; all who have confirmed that he is the person paying for the defence of the two suspected drug traffickers.