FATONEWS : Shell companies, ghost ships and secret traders: How Russia circumvents Western oil sanctions

His one and only “boss” is the dollar, to hear him tell it, a phrase he repeats over and over to his colleagues, between two puffs of Marlboro Light. He wasn’t going to let sanctions on Russian oil, passed by the United States and the other G7 countries, stop him. From his trading room in Dubai’s Platinum Tower, Azerbaijan-born trader Etibar Eyyub keeps the cash flow running with boundless creativity: offshore companies; ghost freighters sailing with their transponders switched off; under-the-radar transshipments away from shorelines, etc.

While the man is unknown to the general public, US authorities are well aware of him, and have put him under investigation. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) suspected that he had created a network of shell companies, which worked in conjunction with a commodities trading firm, Coral Energy, which is well-established in Geneva and Dubai. From 2014 until at least 2018, he was a trader and right-hand man to Coral’s founder, Tahir Garayev. Garayev is also Azerbaijani and he too is in the DOJ’s sights. When contacted, the DOJ declined to comment on the matter.

Coral Energy had been a privileged partner of Russia and its oil giant Rosneft, before the war against Ukraine. On its website, the company states that it withdrew from its Russian contracts by the end of 2022. In a statement to Le Monde, the company said, through its lawyer, that it “places the highest priority [on] compliance with US, EU, UK, and other applicable sanctions laws,” adding that it was working with external legal advisers “to review its activities and ensure compliance with the law.”

A ‘laundering’ system

However, some of the group’s internal documents, obtained by Le Monde, show that, working together, Eyyub and Garayev have enabled Russia to sell a significant proportion of its oil to the rest of the world, without always complying with international sanctions. These confidential documents directly point to European connections: They reveal that Coral Energy’s trading activity was fueled by funds from European banks, including France’s Société Générale, to the tune of tens of millions of euros, but also by purchases made by several oil majors, including French giant TotalEnergies.