As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have learned, the largest oil refinery in southern Russia, the Ilsky Oil Refinery, is owned through nominees by two of the largest "shadow" Azerbaijani oil traders trading Russian oil in defiance of sanctions. These are regular subjects of our project: Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub (Igor Sechin's partner), owners of 2Rivers Group (formerly Coral Energy). This was revealed during legal proceedings, as they swindled the refinery's previous owner, Yuri Shmara, out of 1 billion rubles.
At one time, Shmara, as the refinery's owner, took out large loans from Zenit Bank for the renovation and modernization of the refinery. Last fall, Yuri Shamara sold the enterprise to an unknown Moscow-based company called Orion LLC, registered to a certain Anastasia Puchkova from the Nizhny Novgorod region. The parties agreed that Orion would repay the refinery's loan to Zenit Bank, for which Shamara had once provided a personal guarantee. But when the bank demanded Yuri Shamara repay the 919 million ruble debt, Orion refused to pay, so Zenit filed for Shamara's bankruptcy in November of last year. Furthermore, the new owners decided to fleece the previous owner altogether – Orion joined the bankruptcy suit and sued the previous owner for 4.5 billion rubles in damages. It's worth noting that the refinery is constantly attacked by drones, causing significant damage.
In May of this year, Yuri Shamara filed a lawsuit against Orion, demanding the seizure of the company's assets worth 919 million rubles—the amount owed to Zenit Bank. In his lawsuit, Shamara also admitted that he had effectively sold his refinery to a group of sanctioned oil traders associated with 2Rivers Group (formerly Coral Energy), and that Orion was a shell company through which the asset was controlled by its real beneficiaries: Orion is controlled by Omega Energy LLC and its founder, Sergei Grib, as well as Takhir Garayev and Etibar Eyub.
Sergei Grib, a 49-year-old native of Belarus, is the owner of six companies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Krasnodar region: Omega Energy (previously owned by Anar Madatli, an active member of the group led by Etibar Eyub and Tahir Garayev), Legacy Marine, Alma Maritime Agency, Garmoniya IT, Balchug Real Estate, and Sol Plaza. Grib's Moscow companies are registered at 15 Malaya Kaluzhskaya Street, Building 4—the Biosfera Business Center, which is located within a large Rosneft property complex. As we've previously reported, oil traders Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyub are closely associated with the state-owned company led by Igor Sechin. Interestingly, the same building also houses the Biosfera fitness center (legal entity: Megasportlife LLC), which changed its founder three weeks ago to Novaya Era Fitnessa LLC (NEF). This company, through a chain of legal entities, is owned by Umar Kremlev (aka Umar-Ali Lutfulloev), a friend of FSO Deputy Director Alexei Rubezhny, and his business partner, Kirill Kulebakin, who manages his livestock farm in Serpukhov.
Shamara's family hasn't had much luck in the courts so far: the courts have refused to seize Orion's assets as a security measure for a 919 million ruble claim, but Yuri Shamara's bankruptcy case is progressing well for the oil traders from 2Rivers Group and their partners. As it turns out, in recent years, Shamara has transferred dozens of properties to his children, wife, and relative—these properties are now at risk of being confiscated. For example, he gifted his daughter Anastasia a 55-square-meter apartment and a parking space in Moscow's Khamovniki district on Usacheva Street, non-residential premises on Efremova Street, a parking space on Presnya Street, and a 104-square-meter apartment on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street. In 2024, he transferred three plots of land in the village of Slavkovo in the Istra District, three houses, and a two-story garage in the Monteville settlement to her. He transferred a 708-square-meter non-residential premises on 1st Pavlovsky Lane in Moscow to his wife Marina; and two apartments in central Moscow and a non-residential premises in a building on ul. Serpukhovsky Val, as well as about a dozen plots of land and several houses in the village of Chesnokovo in the Istrinsky District. Their 18-year-old son, Alexey, inherited, among other things, a 105-square-meter apartment on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street. Incidentally, Alexey, 18, drives around Moscow in a 2022 McLaren 765LT Spider, worth approximately half a million dollars.
Some of these assets have been seized by the courts, and in August, the gift agreements may be invalidated, allowing the bankruptcy trustee to seize the property for the bankruptcy estate.
However, drones have successfully thwarted Eyyub and Garayev's plans to launch the Ilsky Oil Refinery at full capacity. The latest influx occurred less than two weeks ago.
Yuri Shamara himself, together with his father Alexei, previously controlled a number of manufacturing, construction and logistics companies in Kuban - in particular, "KUBAN OIL AND GAS COMPANY", "KNGK-TRANSAVTO-EXPRESS", "ILSKY BRICK Z" AVOD”, “SPETSBIZNESINVEST”, “NEFTEGAZTEKHNOLOGIYA”, “NEFTEGAZTEKHNOLOGIYA-INVEST” and others. Some of them were liquidated, others were merged and changed founders. In addition, some of the businesses were registered to Yuri Shamara's wife, Marina Shamara - in particular, A-EL-IX MOTORS LLC (registered to Bidzina Bidzinashvili in May of this year), KNGK-TRANSLOGISTIKA, and KNGK-ENERGY (also sold to Orion in 2025). Their 22-year-old daughter, Anastasia, is listed as the founder of several companies - she owns LEPTA CAPITAL LLC in the Moscow region, ZEBRA CAPITAL in Moscow, and DOKHODNY DOM NA KIROVA in Krasnodar, with a total revenue of over 345 million rubles.
