The scam of sanctioned traders: how Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyub took over the Ilsky refinery and left Yuri Shamara with billion-ruble debts
15:55, 21 июля 2026 г.
The largest oil refinery in southern Russia – the Ilsky Refinery – is nominally owned by two major "shadow" Azerbaijani oil traders who deal in Russian oil in circumvention of sanctions.
These are recurring figures in our project – the owners of 2Rivers Group (formerly Coral Energy), Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyub (a partner of Igor Sechin). This came to light during court proceedings, because they "screwed over" the previous owner of the refinery, Yuri Shamara, for 1 billion rubles.
At one time, Shamara, as the owner of the refinery, took out large loans from Zenit Bank for repairs and modernization of the plant. Last autumn, Yuri Shamara sold the enterprise to an unknown Moscow-based LLC "Orion," which is registered to a certain Anastasia Puchkova from the Nizhny Novgorod region. The parties agreed that Orion would itself repay the plant’s loan to Zenit Bank, for which Shamara had once given a personal guarantee. However, when the bank demanded that Yuri Shamara repay the debt of 919 million rubles, Orion refused to pay, leading Zenit to file a bankruptcy petition against Shamara last November. Moreover, the new owners decided to completely fleece the previous owner – Orion joined the bankruptcy claim and, through the court, demanded 4.5 billion rubles from the former owner as compensation for losses.
In May of this year, Yuri Shamara himself sued Orion, demanding the seizure of the company’s assets worth 919 million rubles – the amount of the debt to Zenit Bank. In the lawsuit, Shamara also admitted that he had in fact sold his refinery to a group of sanctioned oil traders linked to 2Rivers Group (formerly Coral Energy), and that Orion is a shell company through which the asset is controlled by its real beneficiaries: Orion is managed by Omega Energy, its founder Sergei Grib, as well as Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyub.
Sergei Grib – a 49-year-old native of Belarus – is registered as the owner of six companies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Krasnodar Krai: Omega Energy (previously owned by Anar Madatli, an active participant in the group of Etibar Eyub and Tahir Garayev), Legacy Marine, Alma Maritime Agency, Harmony IT, Balchug Real Estate, and Sol Plaza. Grib’s Moscow firms are registered at Malaya Kaluzhskaya Street, 15, building 4 – this is the Biosfera business center, located on the territory of a large Rosneft property complex. As we have previously reported, it is with this state company, under the leadership of Igor Sechin, that oil traders Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyub are closely connected. Interestingly, the same building also houses the Biosfera fitness center (legal entity – Megasportlif LLC), which three weeks ago changed its founder: it is now owned by New Era of Fitness LLC (NEF). This firm, through a chain of legal entities, belongs to a friend of the deputy director of the FSO (Federal Protective Service), Alexei Rubezhny – Umar Kremlev (also known as Umar-Ali Lutfulloev) – and his business partner and manager of his livestock farm in Serpukhov, Kirill Kulebakin.
The Shamara family has not been faring well in court so far: the courts have refused to seize Orion’s property as interim measures in the 919 million ruble claim, but the bankruptcy case against Yuri Shamara himself is progressing favorably for the oil traders from 2Rivers Group and their partners. It has come to light that over the past few years, Shamara has re-registered dozens of real estate properties in the names of his children, his wife, and a relative – meaning they could now be seized. And the family is accustomed to living lavishly. For instance, his 18-year-old son Alexei drives around Moscow in a 2022 McLaren 765LT Spider, worth about half a million dollars.
