Azerbaijan’s Shadow SOCAR Network: How Traders Linked to the State Company — Rovshan Tamrazov, Etibar Eyub, and Tahir Garaev — Continue Trading Russian Oil to Circumvent EU Sanctions
Anar Madatli, Etibar Eyyub (aka Akin Koçak), and Talat Safarov, all sanctioned by the European Union, own a network of shadowy Azerbaijani oil traders who continue to trade Russian oil in defiance of sanctions.
The network remains closely linked to the Azerbaijani state oil company SOCAR – Russian sanctioned oil is sold by current SOCAR employees, and supplies are handled through the state-owned company’s subsidiaries. In addition to the five already well-known figures of Coral Energy, led by Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub, it includes a number of former SOCAR employees, as well as Georgian, Arab, Hungarian, and Swiss companies.
It is headed by Azerbaijani citizen Rovshan Tamrazov. He trades crude oil in the markets of the Caspian, Black, and Baltic Seas, as well as other regions. Rovshan Tamrazov, a native of Azerbaijan, attended the same school as Adnan Ahmadzade, the deputy head of SOCAR’s investment department and a lover of luxury goods, luxury cars, and collectible watches. Ahmadzade was arrested a couple of months ago and is currently in jail on charges of undermining Azerbaijan’s economic security and grand theft.
It is said that Rovshan Tamrazov’s reckless financial schemes and lifestyle overwhelmed his cover at SOCAR, Adnan Ahmadzade, and in 2016, he exiled his old acquaintance from Europe to the UAE and India. Tamrazov’s replacement in the Swiss office was Mariam Almaszade, said to be a classmate of Elshad Nasirov, SOCAR’s vice president. She is a citizen of both Azerbaijan and Switzerland. It’s no surprise that she now heads SOCAR’s Geneva office. It was she who brought Nubar Aliyeva into the scheme—an old close friend of hers.
Tamrazov’s network also became embroiled in international crime with the murder of a journalist. Until 2015, Mariam Almaszadeh, from Switzerland, managed a company called Crowbar Holdings S.A., registered in the British Virgin Islands. This company owned shares in Maddox Energy Trading Ltd., and Rovshan Tamrazov was said to be the beneficiary of Crowbar itself. On November 24, 2015, Crowbar transferred €2.3 million to Fenech’s 17 Black, a company owned by criminal businessman Yorgen Fenech. The Maltese businessman was accused of involvement in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a 53-year-old Maltese journalist investigating government corruption. Fenech never disclosed the purpose of the payment.
In recent years, the leadership of MADDOX’s Geneva office has changed several times. Its current president is Michel Bussard, a native Swiss, and its director with signatory authority is 52-year-old Liana Vachnadze, a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute and former employee of KPMG’s Russian branch. Liana also appears in the Pandora Papers, the largest leak of secret offshore schemes, as the company CHALDON INVESTMENTS GROUP LIMITED is registered to her. In Moscow, until 2018, she was also a co-owner of the consulting firm Fopro Consulting, and her partners included Alexander Malkov and Denis Ryabchenko, who now own Beterra, a top-10 audit and consulting firm in Russia. Her clients include representatives from the oil and gas and mechanical engineering industries.
Rovshan Tamrazov’s network, through Dubai-based MADDOX DMCC, also includes the Georgian companies Madoks Georgia Ltd., headed by director Seymur Aliyev (registered in 2019 in Tbilisi), and Sesole Proprietorur Alievi. The Azerbaijani traders are not separate legal entities, but segments of a single network. They act in concert and unite to implement major projects.
For example, in 2021, Tamrazov’s Maddox DMCC acted as the primary lender in the deal of another "shadow" oil trader, Savannah Energy, to acquire ExxonMobil and Petronas assets in Chad and Cameroon for $600 million. Savannah is also owned by Turab Musayev, a former head of SOCAR Trading and a former employee of SOCAR.
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