Shadowy Oil Trader With Kremlin, Orbán Ties Supplied Billions in Russian Crude to Europe

A little-known oil trading firm, Normeston Trading, has quietly funneled more than 20 million tonnes of Russian crude—worth over $10 billion—into Central Europe since 2011, according to ImportGenius trade data analyzed by iStories.

Registered in Belize in 2006, the company operates through a network that links former Kremlin oil executives and allies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Despite EU sanctions on Russian energy, the firm’s shipments surged after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and again after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

From the Russian side, Normeston was once owned by Lev Tolkachov, a former Lukoil employee and professional race car driver who founded his own team, Rumos Racing. 

But by 2021, Cypriot corporate records showed that 49.9% of Normeston was held by Marte Trading and Investment, a U.K. company owned by Valery Subbotin, a former vice president of Lukoil and ex-chairman of its trading arm Litasco. Subbotin left Russia in 2016 and is now a Cypriot citizen living in Monaco.

On the Hungarian side, shareholders include Imre Fazakas, a Soviet-educated oil consultant and former Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyrt. (MOL) executive, and The Madera Investment Fund, tied to György Nagy, a businessman with close ties to Orbán's political circles. 

In 2009, Normeston acquired a 50% stake in the gas trader MET from MOL, later transferring it to Orbán confidants István Garancsi and his partner György Nagy.

Normeston also sold dozens of Lukoil gas stations in Slovakia and Hungary to MOL in 2021 and 2022, and its Moscow office is located in a building used by firms linked to Nagy, to Hungarian OTP-bank headed by Sándor Csányi Hungary’s wealthiest men and an Orbán ally and to Csanyi’s son Attila.

Corporate filings show that Normeston was "under common control" in 2017–2018 with a Russian firm headed by racer Tolkachev and half owned by Sergei Gzhelyak, who is currently the managing director of Novatek Gas & Power, a trading arm of Gennady Timchenko’s Novatek, and holds a minority stake in the company. 

Timchenko, a close Putin ally under U.S. sanctions since 2014, once controlled up to a third of Russian oil exports.

Beyond Normeston, Subbotin also owned the companies of Eminent Energy group, which holds a 45% stake in a fuel terminal in Antwerp. 

From 2023 to early 2025, he was listed as "a person with significant control" (75% or more) of Eminent Energy UK Ltd, a part of the Eminent Energy group. The U.K. entity was and still is owned by Cyprus-based Eminent Energy, which was involved in fuel smuggling operations run by companies linked to Serhiy Kurchenko, a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch under EU and U.S. sanctions.

Kurchenko assets in Ukrainian Kherson were confiscated. Eminent Energy in its financial reports mentioned it lost control over the assets in Kherson worth $10 million because they were seized during the investigation in Ukraine. Subbotin did not respond to the repeatedly sent requests whether he was in business with sanctioned Kurchenko or purchased any of his assets.

Eminent Energy delivered over 189,000 tonnes of fuel to Horizon International Trading, a company historically tied to Dmitry Skigin, a St. Petersburg trader linked to mob boss Ilya Traber, and whose assets were inherited by his son Mikhail Skigin. Traber, a longtime Putin acquaintance, was implicated in Spain’s "Russian mafia" probe.

One of Eminent's suppliers was Rusinvest, owned by Anatoly Yablonsky, who provided over 1 million tonnes of petroleum products worth US$521 million. Yablonsky partnered with Traber in the Ust-Luga port.

In 2019, Subbotin reportedly co-invested in the Antipinsky Oil Refinery alongside Ilgam Ragimov and Nikolai Yegorov, both longtime friends of Putin. Ragimov was quoted by Russian Forbes as saying they were "friends for 40 years."

Since 2020, Normeston also partnered with Swiss-based Proton Energy Group, now Epsilon Holding, owned by Nisan Moiseev, a former Rosneft partner in Ukraine who publicly called himself a friend of Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s Ukrainian confidant. Moiseev's Proton got guarantees of $18 million in payments from Normeston Trading via Hungarian OTP-Bank, Normeston financial report shows.

In June 2025, Hungary and Slovakia jointly blocked a new EU sanctions package on Russian energy. That same month, Orbán said that if Putin visited Hungary, he would be welcomed "with full honors".

A spokesperson for Gennady Timchenko did not respond to iStories’ questions about whether he has any ties to Normeston Trading or why the group has so many direct and indirect links to his top executives. The executives themselves did not respond to requests for comment. Gunvor said it has never done business with Normeston.

Daniel Szoke (Direkt36) contributed to this investigation.