Dark Finance: Oil Traders Fueling Russia’s Shadow Fleet

Oil traders of the Russian sanctions fleet

For observers who monitor the activities of the Russian tanker fleet, which is often called the “shadow one,” an interesting question remains: the effectiveness of the sanctions imposed in this area by the US, the European Union, and other jurisdictions.

You can often hear about tankers transporting Russian oil changing flags and even names in an attempt to “avoid the sanctions storms,” but much less often you can hear about how traders hide in the financial oceans, conducting contracts between Russian banks and oil recipients in third countries, which today have become the main sponsors of Russian aggression, authoritarianism, and revanchism.

But if it is difficult to hide an oil tanker, then oil traders often remain in deep shadow, compared to Russian banks, shipowners, and oil production companies. However, sometimes Moscow’s propaganda itself provides grounds for analysis here.

A year ago, in July, a bunch of Russian oil resources and even such an official as TASS reported on the conclusion of a four-month contract for $ 400 million between Moscow’s PJSC “RussNeft” and the UAE company “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE”.

“RussNeft” is the largest domain of the clan of Russian oligarchs of Ingush origin, Mikhail and Sait-Salam Gutseriev, and their numerous relatives are also in the same fate, including the “London prince” Said, the son of Mikhail Gutseriev.

Twenty years ago, “RussNeft” could have inherited the fortune of “Yukos”, but through a multitude of combinations, its beneficiaries were able to regain control of these assets by 2013 and establish a mutually beneficial symbiosis with Kremlin officials.

Mikhail Gutseriev’s close cooperation with the regime of Alexander Lukashenko led to his receiving European sanctions in the summer of 2021, which became especially critical after Switzerland, where the trader “Glencore”, the old partner and minority shareholder of “RussNeft”, and the London employer of the aforementioned Said Gutseriev, was located.

Gutseriev’s numerous attempts to save his European communications and Cypriot citizenship were in vain after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the obvious role of “RussNeft” in financing the Kremlin’s military golem; since mid-2022, Sait-Salam and Said Gutseriev have also been subject to sanctions.

This led not only to a “divorce by arrangement” with Glencore, but also to a gradual, at least formal, exit of “RussNeft” from foreign oil production assets. The latest in this “optimization” was Azerbaijan, from where Gutseriev’s business was “evacuated” literally a few weeks before the conclusion of the aforementioned contract with “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE”.

Then “RussNeft” severed ties with the British-Virginian company “GEA Holdings Ltd.”, which, through a partnership with the state oil company of Azerbaijan, participated in the development of the Absheron, Binagadi, Neftchala and Shirvan fields, and excluded from its structure four companies from the Cayman Islands, “Kura Valley Holdings Ltd.”, “Karasu Operating Company”, “Karasu Petroleum Company” and “Karasu Development Company”, which operated the Padar-Kharami and Myshovdag-Kelameddin fields.

It is highly likely that in July 2024, the agreement with Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE was inflated through various channels, including the “Islam News” media agency, which operates from Moscow in Muslim countries, precisely to “sweeten the pill” and to emphasize the “commercial viability” of “RussNeft”.

However, we will be more interested in the Gutserievs’ family business, which over the past year has managed to “mark itself” in the redistribution of wealth with the lands of “Abrau-Durso” and in the extremely eventful story of Lukashenko’s nationalization of the “Slavkaliy” plant for half a billion dollars, which “by a strange coincidence” fell on US sanctions against Belarusian fertilizer manufacturers.

Much more interesting is the role of the aforementioned company from the UAE, “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE,” because in open Russian-language sources it is mentioned exclusively as a counterparty to the above-described Gutseriev’s contract; apparently, registration in the free economic zone of the Emirates has obvious bonuses in the form of non-publicity.

But by some miracle, the Russian tax code of this company was found, namely 9909680328, by which it is registered in Cyrillic transcription.

And here the most interesting thing became clear, and not even the correctness of the code “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE,” cleared from all databases, but the fact that this company has a ruble account in “VTB Bank,” namely 40807810306800000089, through which in June 2025 a payment of more than 788 million rubles ($10 million) was made under the contract dated December 10, 2024, for oil supplies, and it is not surprising that the payer was a structure controlled by the Gutseriev clan.

Moreover, based on other operations, it was possible to find out that it was under the contracts concluded by “Fuel and Oil Dynamics FZE” that on January 20 of this year, almost 100 thousand tons of Urals oil worth $38.7 million was loaded onto the sanctioned tanker Luna, IMO number 9258868, under the flag of Vietnam, in the port of Ust-Luga.

That is, under the terms of the FOB contract, the price per barrel of this batch of oil was almost $63.7, which is $3 more than the maximum price for Russian oil set by the “price cap” regime. The port of destination was declared as Khor Fakkan in the UAE, but in fact the ship unloaded at the end of February in Vadinar, India. After that, the tanker changed its name to “Noctis” and declared a new flag – the Comoros Islands, and returned to Ust-Luga, from where it left with a new cargo in early July 2025.

The technical society that was supposed to confirm the maritime safety of this tanker until March 2025 was the Japanese “ClassNK,” where the tanker was numbered 039418, but later these files were “cleaned up.” However, the shipowner of the tanker was “Altitude Assets Corp.” from Seychelles, and the ISM manager of the tanker was the Azerbaijani “Aegis Voyage Shipmanagement” from Sumgait, with director Gogi Churkveidze.

On social networks, there is his “full namesake,” who graduated from the Batumi State Maritime Academy and claims to work for the French transnational corporation “CMA CGM Group”, which is engaged in global logistics and is, among other things, the fourth-largest maritime container transportation company in the world. In this case, it is not surprising that on social networks, the nominal manager of a sanctioned tanker posts photos from China and Singapore.

However, other oil traders associated with the Russian tanker fleet have an even more interesting biography, especially when they also have Russian tax codes and ruble accounts, as can be seen with another Dubai offshore company, namely “Imperium Trading FZE,” registration number 29853, which also has a Russian tax code for its own Cyrillic transcription, namely 9909608265.

Not only the transfer of more than 3 billion rubles by this structure in April 2025 through the Moscow-sanctioned “Zenit Bank” to account 40807810001000184902 regarding the March contract for the supply of crude oil became interesting here immediately, but also the very variable transactions of this company in the UAE itself.

As, in addition to oil products, this structure actively trades textiles, shoes with India and even imports tons of green tea in bags from Uzbekistan to the Emirates. The broad profile of this structure was made possible by poorly hidden traces in Russian registers, because there “Imperium Trading FZE” was previously repeatedly noted among the co-founders of the Moscow company “Fortis,” whose nominal name is Muscovite Yuri Kukuev, born in 1948.

In 2000, this figure became the first deputy minister of natural resources of the Russian Federation, responsible for forestry; in 2002, he “disappeared from the radar,” sometimes blaming in the State Duma as a representative of the “Union of Timber Manufacturers and Exporters,” and in 2008, he became deputy to the Russian Minister of Agriculture Alexey Gordeyev, and for this purpose the number of vice ministers was specially changed. 

Moreover, as was written in Russia itself at the time, Kukuev’s reappointment was lobbied by financial circles, who tried to “hold on to the maximum” of the then Russian duties on the export of raw wood, and his return to the government was actually organized by the St. Petersburg swindler Vladimir Golubev, nicknamed “Barmaley” and with claims to the role of a “thief in law.”

However, it was not this that helped Kukuev’s career growth, but the close and even trusting relationship of “Barmaley” with Putin’s old protégé Igor Sechin and his first wife, Marina; however, in March 2009, after the end of the scams with timber duties, Kukuev was sent to retirement, but his further services as a “zits-head” were not refused.

Among other things, Kukuev was a co-founder of the now liquidated intermediary structure in the forestry industry “Transfinkom,” as well as in the “Public Ecological Control of Russia.” His “Fortis,” among other things, concluded contracts with commercial structures of the Gutseriev clan.

Kukuev’s rich commercial past somewhat explains the broad profile of trade of “Imperium Trading FZE” in the UAE, which is not limited to oil; it is highly likely that the accompanying transactions for the purchase of towels and tea by the tons were given away to nominals by the true beneficiaries of this structure, to “keep their pants up.”

At the same time, the connection of the described oil trader with Qatar and the occupied territories of Ukraine is traced through Kukuyev’s companies. Through the co-founders of “Fortis”, the Qatari company “QFIH LLC”, registration number in Doha 01357 and Russian fiscal code 9909611557, has not been completely removed from Russian registers.

At the same time, Kukuev, together with Alexander Mishin, was a co-founder of the Moscow firm “Orgstroyproekt”, code 7709733353, and now Mishin founded the structure of the same name with code 9001030131 and activities in the field of “construction control” in the small village of Chernozemne near the city of Melitopol, occupied since 2022. 

But not only companies from the Emirates serve the financial interests of the beneficiaries of “Russneft”. Back in late 2023, Moscow “financial channels” published information about two contracts for the next year for the supply of oil with the company “Blackford Corporation Limited”, registered in Hong Kong, for a total of $ 1.4 billion.

The specified structure with registration number 3126918 actually emerged in Hong Kong in February 2022; it has a Russian tax number, 9909608882. In 2023, “Blackford Corporation Limited” was actively involved in the export of Russian oil directly through “Rosneft”, as well as through the Moscow firm “Oil Technologies,” code 7728731619, and “Kirishinefteorgsintez” (“KINEF”), code 4708007089, which is on the US sanctions list.

The most notable here is “Oil Technologies”, which controls the “Chernomorsky Perevalochny Complex” or “Black Sea Transshipment Complex”, tax code 2315171236, and the “Afipsky Oil Refinery Plant”, tax code 7704214548. After all, “Oil Technologies” is the company of the above-described Mikhail Gutseriev, who, through it at the end of 2019, acquired a controlling stake in the same from the clan of Vladimir Kogan, and this transaction subsequently led to commercial disputes in the Moscow commercial courts, where the Gutseriev clan completely won as of the end of 2023.

It is noteworthy that the formal founders of “Oil Technologies” are the Cypriot companies “Cambelor Holdings Ltd.”, Russian tax code 9909512468, and “Samelor Holdings Ltd.” with Cypriot number HE 395679, and that all of these structures remain outside the sanctions lists of many jurisdictions.

We should also add that the media reported on the transportation of Russian oil from “Rosneft” from Tuapse to Fujairah in 2023 in favor of “Blackford Corporation Limited” by the tanker “Feliks,” IMO number 9459242, which was then under the flag of the Cook Islands and now uses the jurisdiction of Sierra Leone. However, the main attention of that publication was paid to the sanctioned tanker, which probably entered the occupied Kerch, Crimea, in January 2025 and subsequently carried out a raid transshipment of oil near the Egyptian Port Said.

In addition, “Blackford Corporation Limited” appears in information about contracts for supplies to Turkey, where it acts as a recipient of both oil and other cargoes, for example, sulfur, which it received from “TAIF-NK,” a Russian oil refinery near Nizhnekamsk, which is controlled by Leonid Mikhelson’s “Sibur” concern. And in April 2025, this corporation transferred 145.5 million yuan under the contract dated March 5 to its account at the Moscow-based sanctioned bank “VTB,” 40807156006800000030.

Another notable oil trader serving the Russian tanker fleet is “Zion Trade LTD”, also registered in Dubai, which also has a Russian tax number 9909672630 and is under US sanctions. In March-April 2025, this structure carried out transactions worth 1,253.4 million rubles through the sanctioned “Gazprombank”, where the firm has account 40807156400000000529.

Thus, in 2025, the company “Myronix Trading Limited”, registered in the Seychelles, transferred funds under oil contracts through “Gazprombank”, among other things, it has a Russian tax number, 9909684442.

This structure was a trader in the transaction for the sale of 44.8 thousand tons of oil for $ 18.7 million, delivered from the port of Primorsk to India in April 2025 by the tanker “Olympic Flag”, IMO number 9271341, under the flag of Greece, for which no sanctions have been identified so far.

At least previously, the shipowners and managers for the “Olympic Flag” were the Athenian company “Springfield Shipping Co. Panama SA”, and the owner was another company from Athens, “Kelso Ene”. Two years ago the crews for it were formed, among other things, through another Greek company, “IMS S.A.”

It is highly likely that “Myronix Trading Limited” is a clone of the Emirati company “Marca Energy Trading DMCC”, founded in March 2014 in Jumeirah under the number DMCC-33790, and included in the US sanctions lists since January 2025. 

Among other things, “Marca Energy Trading DMCC” purchased oil from the same “RussNeft” at the end of 2023, and in 2020 it was among the top 20 buyers of Russian oil, receiving 2.3 million tons for $1 billion.

At the same time, there is no information in the open registers about the separate Russian tax number of this company, which cannot be guaranteed, but regarding its bank account in “Gazprombank” 40807156000000000628, where 25.4 million yuan was deposited for the oil delivered in April 2025, the tax number for “Marca Energy” is same as for “Myronix Trading Limited,” namely 9909684442.

Thus, oil trading companies are a significant component in the system of Russian exports and the activities of the Kremlin’s tanker fleet.

At least some of these traders are still not under sanctions, and at the same time, they are not one-day companies. These firms are closely connected to Russian financial and industrial groups that help them circumvent sanctions, in particular the Gutseriev business empire, as well as businesses in Hong Kong, Qatar, Turkey, and the UAE. 

The sanctions policy against such oil traders should be strengthened and have a systemic nature, both in relation to the firms themselves and in terms of their management, beneficiaries, and key counterparties, which will be a significant step in countering the Russian Federation’s “shadow fleet.”