There are many labels attached to self-made millionaire businessman John Deuss. He has been an oil baron, a purveyor of fashion and a publisher amongst other endeavours.

His has been known to fly his own Lear jet. He set up a New York fashion company and conducted international oil trade deals that put him in direct conflict with the old Soviet Union and brought criticism for trading with South Africa during the embargo years of apartheid.

The Dutch businessman has long been associated with Bermuda, where he has a home and a number of companies, although his business empire is global.

The former used car salesman started as an oil trader during the OPEC oil embargo crisis of the early 1970s with a company called JOC Oil. A year later he opened a short-lived fashion label called ?Alexandra Christie? in New York.

But it was his interest and skill in oil trading that led to reportedly fabulous riches. In the 1970s he struck a massive oil trade deal with the USSR and took shipment of a reputed $122 million-worth of Soviet oil before withholding the bulk of the payment for the oil because of a legal dispute.

The dispute eventually went all the way to the Privy Council in London and was finally settled in a confidential agreement with the USSR?s state oil company just as the USSR collapsed at the end of the 1980s.

During the late 1970s and 1980s he made a fortune selling oil to South Africa despite an international trade embargo. During this time he also bought up US East Coast oil refineries for his company Transworld Oil.

In the 1990s he was involved in attempts to build an oil pipeline from the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan and played a leading role in a $230 million deal between US oil company Chevron and the Kazahstan Government but soon after, the Bermuda-based Oman Oil Company involved in the deal ended up having its share of the spoils severely curtailed and he was soon no longer the company president as it relocated to Muscat.

This month, The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia said Mr. Deuss looked set to realise a 47 million Australian dollar (US$36 million) profit on the sale of his company?s stake in an Australian oil exploration business.

The 11 percent stake in Australian Worldwide Exploration was expected to sell for an estimated $155 million (US$118 million). Mr. Deuss got the shares at an imputed value of $108.7 million (US$83 million) earlier this year.

He owns , which is thought to be the biggest private yacht in Bermuda, and has an office in Flatts Village.

An avid equestrian, he has been a major backer of local riding, although his extensive paddocks and fields on St. Mark?s Road in Smith?s Parish are rarely used now after Mr. Deuss moved most of his stable of show jumpers to Canada.

His current business interests include the First Curacao International Bank and a string of Transworld Payment Solutions businesses in various parts of the world that are involved in financial transactions, project management, and software installation.