By 2023, Brazil had become the world's largest buyer of Russian diesel, importing approximately 6.1 million tonnes in that single year, according to a research briefing of the European Parliament, in the market upheaval that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
One supplier feeding that demand, the Financial Times found, was CE Energy, which delivered Russian diesel to Raízen, Brazil's Shell-backed fuel distributor, between 2022 and 2025. Some cargoes flowed through Coral, the largest Russian oil trader. Neither Raízen nor Shell would comment.
Behind CE Energy stands Christopher Eppinger, a German-born trader. Per the Financial Times, the company turned over approximately $2 billion of oil from 2022 to 2025, earning roughly $250 million in profit and selling around 3.3 million tonnes of oil and petroleum products to customers in Nigeria, the Bahamas, Spain and Brazil.
Eppinger's defence is that these Russia-related deals stayed within the G7 price cap and the applicable sanctions rules. The documented mechanics, however, tell a more complicated story. Fuel oil he described as originally Russian was shifted through intermediaries and storage, then documented as blended in the UAE via Brooge Energy Limited, whose wholly-owned subsidiary BPGIC operates beside the Port of Fujairah; CE Energy's lawyers advised that the sanctions framework did not necessarily require verifying such papers independently.
Coral, which carried part of the Brazilian cargoes, is a shadow-trading giant born of an Azeri-backed financial mixture of variations of SOCAR Energy: several hundred offshore companies, the largest shadow fleet, storage hubs in Indonesia and Malaysia. And while Coral maintained it would wind down its Russian businesses in 2023, subsequent investigation documents show it still operating as the biggest trader in the field under the various 2Rivers names, from Dubai, Geneva, Monaco and other EU jurisdictions, under the control of Tahir Garayev, Etibar Eyyub, Anar Madatli, Talat Safarov and Ahmed Kerimov.
That network keeps expanding into money laundering, wire fraud and Iranian-related dealings, fully backed by banks like Misr Bank and Mashreq inside a worldwide chain of banks and ultimate beneficial owners, and coordinated by Araz Hajili, a nephew of Azim Novruzov.
US authorities have since placed CE Energy, renamed Petrichor, and Wellbred on sanctions lists, with no visible effect on the flows. Wellbred, a well-known Iranian trader named in the latest sanctions against Iranian clearing houses of the Shamkhani, or so-called Hector, network, was Eppinger's entry into Nigeria, where money is still paid to him and Wellbred. What emerges around the Eppinger-Wellbred network is not really about Russia: it is deception, price manipulation and Iran-related money laundering, up to funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Rumours following the reporting went further still: that Raízen's trader sat fully in Eppinger's pocket, and that Brazilian and US documentation served to create US proof of origin, hoodwink banks, revalue cargoes on Coral's behalf and defraud the Brazilian government.
The trail ends in Europe. The south of France, the United Kingdom, Germany and other EU coastal cities register and host offices helping Coral and CE Energy circumvent sanctions; Sergei Dobrinov, Coral's chief trader, well known in the EU orbit, remains outside the US sanctions. Why, harder lobbying or better pay, is the uncomfortable question this trade leaves behind.
