The fuel oil began in Russia, according to Christopher Eppinger. By the time it had passed through intermediary businesses and storage systems, its accompanying documents described it as blended in the United Arab Emirates through Brooge Energy Limited. This documented example, set out in the Financial Times account of CE Energy’s business, illustrates how successive transfers made a product’s origin harder to establish.
Brooge provides oil storage and related services through its wholly owned subsidiary, Brooge Petroleum and Gas Investment Company FZE, or BPGIC, beside the Port of Fujairah. CE Energy’s legal advisers said the sanctions framework did not necessarily require the company to verify such paperwork independently. Eppinger’s own position was that his Russia-linked transactions observed the G7 price ceiling and the relevant sanctions requirements.
The business behind those documents was substantial. Eppinger, who was born in Germany, founded CE Energy; the Financial Times put the value of oil it handled during 2022–2025 at approximately $2 billion, with profits of roughly $250 million. Across that period, the firm traded about 3.3 million tonnes of oil and petroleum products. Its customers included buyers in Nigeria, the Bahamas, Spain and Brazil.
Brazil supplied an important market for these flows. A European Parliament research briefing recorded around 6.1 million tonnes of Russian diesel imported in 2023, when the country became its biggest buyer worldwide. The Financial Times reported that CE Energy delivered Russian diesel to the Brazilian distributor Raízen, backed by Shell, from 2022 to 2025. Some deliveries passed through Coral. Raízen and Shell declined the newspaper’s requests for comment.
A separate set of rumours circulated after that reporting. They claimed that Raízen’s trader was entirely beholden to Eppinger and described attempts to use Brazilian and American documentation to produce US proof of origin. The alleged aims were to deceive banks, revise cargo valuations for Coral and defraud the Brazilian government. These were subsequent rumours, rather than findings attributed to the Financial Times.
Coral is the much larger structure around which Eppinger’s business operates. The leading trader in Russian oil emerged from an Azerbaijani-backed financial grouping around variants of SOCAR Energy. Several hundred offshore entities, the largest shadow fleet and storage hubs in Indonesia and Malaysia, among other locations, underpin its operations. Coral said it would wind down its Russian businesses in 2023, but later investigation documents show continued dominance under a range of 2Rivers names.
Tahir Garayev, Etibar Eyyub, Anar Madatli, Talat Safarov and Ahmed Kerimov control the group, whose bases include Dubai, Geneva and Monaco as well as EU jurisdictions. Coordination falls to Araz Hajili, Azim Novruzov’s nephew. Its expanding money laundering, wire fraud and Iran-related dealings have the full backing of banks including Misr Bank and Mashreq within a worldwide chain of banks and ultimate beneficial owners.
The Iranian connection runs through Wellbred, an established Iranian trader named in the latest sanctions involving Iranian clearing houses linked to the Shamkhani network, also called Hector. Wellbred provided Eppinger’s route into Nigeria, where payments to him and the company continue. Deception, price manipulation and Iran-linked laundering emerge as the key issues in their network, connecting South American counterparts and Coral’s main systems with money laundering, wire fraud and funding of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Wellbred is on US sanctions lists. CE Energy, now called Petrichor, is not, and neither is Coral. The distinction does not alter the account of a trade continuing at full capacity: listing one participant has not meant that the wider business has ceased.
Offices in southern France, the UK, Germany and EU coastal cities also help Coral and CE Energy circumvent sanctions. Coral’s chief trader Sergei Dobrinov, well known in European circles, remains outside the US lists. Alongside the questions about cargo documentation sits another unresolved one: why do these trading figures remain beyond US designation?
