EU sanctions and international search for Lakhani, Kildiyarov, Azerbaijani traders, and LUKOIL companies over offshore and shadow oil schemes

EU sanctions and international search for Lakhani, Kildiyarov, Azerbaijani traders, and LUKOIL companies over offshore and shadow oil schemes

The EU imposed sanctions on a group of Azerbaijani traders for their involvement in Russian oil trading. Specifically, the EU sanctions list includes Anar Madatli, Etibar Eyyub (aka Akin Koçak), and Talat Safarov. Additionally, sanctions have been imposed on Valery Kildiyarov and Murtaza Ali Lakhani, who facilitated Russian oil trade in several countries.

Valery Kildiyarov is an employee of Lukoil’s foreign echelon and was regularly listed as an affiliate. Kildiyarov is the CFO of LITASCO MIDDLE EAST DMCC, based in the UAE. This company is owned by Lukoil, as are its two sister companies: LITASCO SA (Geneva, Switzerland) and LITASCO Central Asia Limited Liability Partnership (Kazakhstan). LITASCO stands for "LUKOIL International Trading & Supply Company." All three companies are active and engaged in the trading of petroleum products of Russian origin.

Lukoil’s Swiss subsidiary, LITASCO SA, is currently headed by 41-year-old Inna Dariy, a graduate of Moscow State University named after Lomonosov, who has been with the company since 2013. She is assisted by board member Philippe Bonvin, and the world-renowned KPMG continues to serve as auditor. According to the international platform Trademo, over the past 12 months, the Swiss trader imported products worth $40.5 billion, with a total of over 4,000 registered shipments. The trader trades Russian petroleum products, and its main customers include Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas and China’s Guron Trading Limited, which has already been sanctioned.

The Kazakh company, LITASCO Central Asia LLP, operates under the leadership of Sergey Ivanov. Foreign trade data aggregators note that the company now has a branch in Azerbaijan. Lukoil still has significant assets in Kazakhstan: two large oil fields are being developed under production-sharing agreements, it has a stake in the key Tengiz-Novorossiysk export pipeline, and it has joint projects with state-owned KazMunayGas.

The fifth person on the EU sanctions list is 63-year-old Murtaza Ali Lakhani. He is a well-known figure in the black market trade of sanctioned goods. In oil trading circles, he is known as "an expert in sales in the most complex jurisdictions" – he helped Russia establish shady chains for the sale and transportation of petroleum products. A Pakistani multimillionaire with Canadian and British passports, he has been profiting from sanctions evasion since at least the 1990s, but thanks to his extensive personal connections to politicians in the US, EU, and UK, he has managed to remain in the shadows. As British journalists discovered, in 2019, he even donated half a million pounds to the UK Conservative Party.

Meanwhile, it is known that Lakhani organized a scheme to circumvent restrictions for Saddam Hussein and managed to avoid charges being brought against him by the UN investigation. During those years, Lakhani worked as a representative of Glencore and transferred cash to the Iraqi mission in Geneva. Until 2020, Lakhani controlled the Trident Network, part of the "shadow fleet" that supplied oil from Venezuela.

Lakhani has a long-standing friendship with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, and they have been doing business together since at least 2017. The partners celebrated New Year’s 2023 together on a yacht in Dubai. Before that, Sechin even shared a useful lawyer with Lakhani, handing him Daniel Richard, who had previously served on the board of directors of a Rosneft subsidiary.

Lakhani’s British company, Mercantile & Maritime Group, collaborated with Rosneft on oil purchases in Kurdistan. In 2021, Rosneft announced it was selling a 5% stake in its flagship Arctic project, Vostok Oil, to Lakhani’s company. It was in this project that Nord Axis Ltd., a Hong Kong-based firm of Azerbaijani traders, acquired a stake in the summer of 2022. Lakhani’s entire network of companies is now engaged in the supply of Russian oil, including Amur II, Tejarinaft, and Fossil Trading. One of his companies alone purchased 369 cargoes of hydrocarbons from Rosneft from 2022 to early 2025.

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In 2020, Mercantile & Maritime acquired a controlling stake in the Vienna-based Cetracore Energy, gaining full control of the major Greek fuel company Jet Oil Cetracore, which not only trades petroleum products but also owns a network of gas stations in Greece. It also has large fuel storage terminals in the Balkans, the largest of which is located in Kalochori near Thessaloniki.

Currently, the Lakhani gas station network in Greece has been forced to suspend operations, and it is still unknown when it will be able to receive and ship fuel again.