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A strange seller of Russian oil has been linked to Putin and Orban.

The company Normeston Trading trades Russian oil in Europe. It earns billions of dollars and demonstrates unusual results: the indicators jump during key events for Russian foreign policy. In 2014, after the introduction of sanctions for the annexation of Crimea, the volume of supplies increased fivefold, in 2022 with the beginning of the SVO – another tenfold, and in between these events, from 2017 to 2021, there was almost no trade. Normeston has long been suspected of corrupt ties in Hungary, and now it is known for sure: the company is connected not only to the entourage of Viktor Orban, but also to the entourage of Vladimir Putin.

Normeston Trading itself, on the Hungarian side, is co-owned by people affiliated with Orban’s friends. For years, the press and experts have tried to understand how Normeston could be connected to Russia’s top political circles.

Normeston Trading was registered in 2006 in Belize. In 2009, the company received half of the gas trader MOL Energy Trade (later MET) from Hungary’s largest oil and gas company MOL and soon transferred the asset to Orban’s friend István Garancsi and his partner György Nagy. Normeston’s owners were revealed only in 2014, when they purchased a network of Lukoil gas stations in Slovakia. At that time, they were Russian Lev Tolkachev and Hungarian Imre Fazekas

Tolkachev is a race car driver and owner of a small business in Tver. From the 90s to the mid-2000s, he worked at Lukoil, and then began doing business with former top managers of Gennady Timchenko (he sold his oil business due to sanctions and is at least not directly involved in trading Russian oil). Lev Tolkachev — was also a business partner of Gennady Timchenko’s top-managers. Vladimir Putin’s close friend Timtchenko was the biggest Russian oil trader before 2014 sanctions. One of his former managers, Aleksandr Zhuravlev, still sits on the boards of some companies in the Normeston group together with the race car driver.But there is another person in Normeston who is connected to Lukoil and plays a more convincing role – this is the former vice-president of the company Valery Subbotin, who left for Europe after a conflict with Igor Sechin. Valery Subbotin could have acted as a co-owner of Normeston since 2016, although officially his Cypriot company received 49.9% of the shares only in 2023.

In 2017 and 2018, Cyprus-based Normeston Trading was “under common control” with the Russian company of the race car driver, which was half-owned by another Timchenko top manager — Sergey Gzhelyak. In Cyprus, “common control” means that the companies are owned or their finances are controlled by the same parties

Normeston Trading is a company involved in trading raw materials, particularly crude oil and petroleum products. It has both a Swiss entity, Normeston Trading SA, based in Geneva, and a limited company, Normeston Trading Limited, registered in Cyprus. The company is also known for its involvement in a joint venture with MOL Energy Trade, a subsidiary of Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, to manage crude oil supplies. 

Normeston Trading SA (Switzerland):

• Location: Geneva, Switzerland. 
• Activities: Trading of raw materials, including crude oil, petroleum products, and other raw materials; transport and logistics; and hedging and trading of related financial instruments. 

Normeston Trading Limited (Cyprus):

• Registration Date: 30/12/2016.
• Registration Number: ΗΕ 364468.
• Registered Office: Αμαθούντας, 202, MARINA GARDENS, BLOCK A, Flat/Office 1, 4533, Λεμεσός, Κύπρος. 

Normeston’s Involvement with MOL:

• Normeston Trading Limited has a joint venture with MOL Energy Trade, a subsidiary of MOL (Hungarian oil and gas company). 
• The joint venture is focused on managing crude oil supplies to MOL. 
• Normeston Trading was also involved in the purchase of 50% of MOL Energy Trade’s share capital, leading to joint control. 

Other Relevant Information:

• Normeston Trading Limited is a private company owned by a Russian individual. 
• Normeston Trading Limited is active in the trading of crude oil and refined oil products. 
• The company has been involved in importing sulfur, with Russia being a top sourcing country. 

Among Lukoil senior vice president Subbotin’s acquaintances are the criminal authority Ilya Traber, who is close to Putin, the family of businessman Dmitry Skigin, and classmates Nikolay Egorov and Ilham Rahimov.

Back in 2019, Putin’s former classmate Ilham Rahimov replaced another of the president’s peers from his university days at the Antipinsky Refinery, Russia’s largest independent oil refinery. Sources told Kommersant that Ilham Rahimov, a partner in the Kievskaya Ploshchad real estate group, bought shares in the Antipinsky Refinery. According to the newspaper, Rahimov and former Lukoil senior vice president Valery Subbotin are the main beneficiaries of the offshore firm Nitron Investments, through which a network of other companies owns a stake in Sokar Energy Resource, which owns 80 percent of the Antipinsky Refinery.

https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/Q104920793/ Nikolay Dmitrievich EGOROV is subject to sanctions

The Hungarian owner of Normeston, Imre Fazakas, studied and worked in the USSR, and then continued to cooperate with Russian oilmen. He is connected with the aforementioned MOL and its subsidiary MET. The latter allowed Viktor Orban’s friends to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by selling gas purchased in circumvention of the country’s contract with Gazprom at a reduced price. Neither Gazprom nor the Russian authorities prevented this, perhaps with the aim of establishing informal connections.

Another part of the company, owned by the Hungarians, is registered to The Madera Investment Fund. The fund is associated with the former owner of MET, György Nagy