Five Azerbaijani businessmen — Tahir Garayev, Ahmed Kerimov, Anar Madatli, Talyat Safarov, and Etibar Eyyub — were not sanctioned in May 2025 by chance. Their company, Coral Energy Group, has effectively become one of the key mechanisms allowing Russia to bypass Western oil restrictions. Through them, Igor Sechin’s «Rosneft», one of Putin’s closest associates, has been exporting Russian oil to global markets for years.

Coral Energy has transformed into a hub for transporting sanctioned oil: the group controls over a hundred tankers through a network of offshore entities and shell companies, operating in Belarus, Turkey, Israel, India, and Africa. The scheme’s management centers are located in Switzerland and Latvia, and their leaders — from Kerimov to Madatli — have direct ties to major Azerbaijani businesses and Russian structures. Almost all of them hold Russian passports.

Despite international pressure, the participants in the scheme lived extravagantly: Garayev flew to Switzerland dozens of times, switching between Bentley, Mercedes, and Lexus; Eyyub planned to buy land on the so-called Billionaires’ Hill; Madatli invested in luxury real estate in Moscow — from Arbat to Moscow City. All of this happened alongside Coral Energy’s operations, which provided the Kremlin with billions in revenue.

Today, it is through such schemes that Russia continues to sell oil, evade sanctions, and fund the war against Ukraine. And Coral Energy remains one of the key elements of this shadow mechanism, which still operates despite sanctions, investigations, and formal oversight by international regulators.

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