After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the international community reacted and suddenly Rosneft and other Russian oil majors had to find a new way to sell their oil. Oil and gas sales are the single biggest contributor to the Russian economy and absolutely vital to sustaining their war machine.
Igor Sechin had to find a way to keep the oil flowing out and the money flowing in. Who did Sechin turn to in his time of need? Etibar Eyyub and Tahir Garayev.
Azeri oil traders Eyyub and Garayev met at SOCAR before Garayev formed his own company, Coral Energy, in 2010. In 2014 Eyyub came on board. Both are close personal contacts of Igor Sechin himself.
Prior to the war, Dubai-based Coral Energy was a small trader, never competing with their much bigger European rivals. But in February 2022 that all changed. In the following months, Coral Energy, and its owners Eyyub and Garayev emerged as the largest traders of Russian oil in the world.
Other companies also under the control of Eyyub and Garayev appeared including Nord Axis which quickly acquired Trafigura’s 10% stake in Rosneft’s flagship project Vostok Oil. Nord Axis were registered as a company just 9 days before Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border. It is likely that someone as close to Putin as Igor Sechin would have had knowledge of the invasion before it occurred and he probably started to secure his revenues which he surely knew would be under threat once the war began. Not only did Nord Axis help to prop up Vostok Oil, it also started to export tens of billions of US dollars’ worth of Russian oil.
Another key company in the history of this network is Bellatrix Energy which began trading huge volumes of Russian oil before it was sanctioned by the US. Bellatrix’s funding to take on such a large amount of business came from the Russian Agricultural Bank, including a 350 million dollar loan. The Russians want sanctions removed from this bank claiming they can guarantee only food and mineral fertilisers go through this bank. It is clear that this bank is a useful vehicle for providing liquidity for their sanctioned oil trade.
Coral Energy was the central company, the public face, the official employer. It openly traded Russian oil until they realised that this could bring huge risks to a trading network. If Coral Energy were to fail, it would cause catastrophic financial problems for Rosneft, Russia’s single largest tax contributor. As a result, Coral publicly stated that it no longer traded Russian oil, even going as far as to condemn the invasion of Ukraine.
But to Rosneft officials, the network of companies was still simply known as “Coral” because Coral Energy continued to be heavily involved. Eyyub and Garayev developed a new mechanism and structure to protect themselves from sanctions whilst still maintaining access to key Western finances and services. Let’s be frank – you cannot solely work with Russian banks when the base interest rate is 20%! To do this, Eyyub and Garayev split the network into two sides. Coral was known within the company as the “blue” side while Nord Axis and Bellatrix were “red”. The idea was to protect one side of the business from sanctions and negative publicity by pretending it had no involvement in the Russian oil trade. The blue companies could access services, finance and customers which the red, with their direct and obvious ties to Russian oil, could not. While on the red side, the oil kept flowing from Rosneft on very favourable terms making Eyyub and Garayev very, very rich men.
Throughout 2024, media attention on Coral grew and grew. Finally, they felt that the exposure was too much and tried a few PR stunts in an attempt to avoid the unwanted attention. Firstly, they announced a management buyout. Apparently, Tahir Garayev no longer owned the company, which he sold to his brother-in-law Anar Madatli and the remaining executive team including Talat Safarov and Ahmed Kerimov. Next, they rebranded the company to 2Rivers hoping that the world would forget who they really were.
So in 2025, have Eyyub and Garayev wound down their interest in the Russian oil trade? Are 2Rivers no longer associated to Rosneft? The answer is absolutely not. They have just got a lot better at avoiding scrutiny and evading the impact of sanctions.
Where previously there were only a few companies on the red and blue sides of the network, now there are hundreds. In December 2023, OFAC sanctioned red companies Bellatrix Energy Limited and Volition DMCC. After the sanctions, the number of companies used to directly Russian oil dramatically expanded to more than fifty companies. Their ability to minimise the risk of sanctions had become more complex, more resilient. However, Eyyub and Garayev’s clients and banks simply cannot accept a new company every time they do a deal. Certain companies have emerged as central to Eyyub and Garayev’s ongoing network.
These include: Glenbrook Corporation Limited; Ultimate Spirit Limited and Shanghai Energy Resources Co Ltd; which the company used to export oil to China, India and others. Eyyub and Garayev’s network continued to expand their presence globally, registering these and several other companies in Hong Kong and China, These companies include Fullerton Integrated Limited and Core Stone Financing Limited/They also created their own shipping arm, made up of: DNA Shipping DMCC; Adele Shipping and Freight DMCC, and; Alraso Shipping and Freight, who run their own fleet of so called ‘shadow fleet’ vessels. These are all practices that are designed to make it difficult to trace the origin of oil back to Russia.
Another important company is Novus Middle East DMCC, which sits in the corporate ownership structure of what was Coral Energy. In 2024, Novus Middle East became the owner of Indonesia based oil terminal PT Oil Terminal Karimun. The terminal has become a key transhipment hub, where traders store cargoes, blend oil, and a place where the origin of crude oil can be changed before being re-exported. Before being bought out by Garayev’s company, Russian oil product arrivals at Karimum were sporadic at best. But in 2024, 3.2 million barrels of Russian oil arrived at the terminal, with figures continuing to increase in 2025.
In 2025, Eyyub and Garayev’s network stands at over 250 companies, divided between red and blue but still intertwined via ownership and operating closely with one another, and it likely continues to grow. It has previously been reported that representatives of Eyyub and Garayev travelled to Washington in January 2025 to try and organize a meeting with the new US administration. US lobbying firm Qorvis allegedly played an important part in these negotiations.
There are whispers of yet another rebrand of Eyyub and Garayev’s 2Rivers Group to Saphira Energy FZE, but constant rebranding is not sustainable in the long run. This network was formed on personal relationships that Eyyub and Garayev hold with the likes of Sechin, but how long can these relationships keep a business running? Sanctions are creeping in on the network, tensions are bound to be high.
These tensions continue to grow as Sechin’s other puppets demonstrate that they are more successful at avoiding sanctions. Have these puppets benefited more from Sechin than Eyyub and Garayev? Perhaps Eyyub and Garayev’s alliance with Sechin isn’t as strong as they once assumed. Who will Sechin turn to next as Eyyub and Garayev’s network comes under increasing pressure?
