A "gray" scheme for selling sanctioned Russian oil collapsed due to the greed of its participants. Turkish partners stole, relying on protection from President Erdogan's family, while the Russians exposed the entire group in an attempt to recoup $600 million. VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info explain how it all happened.
In February 2022, it became clear to Russian authorities that they needed alternative ways to trade oil. Members of the Turkish leader's family, including his son Bilal Erdogan and his son-in-law Berat Albayrak, who had previously served as Turkey's Minister of Energy and then as Finance Minister, stepped in to help Sechin, the head of Rosneft. Fuad Huseynli, an Azerbaijani businessman with a British passport who had once worked at British Petroleum and then at VTB Bank, approached them with a tempting offer through his contacts. In Moscow, he owns the oil trader Mostrade, registered to his driver, Russian citizen Zal Vagif Oglu Suleymanov. The company never reported a profit to the Federal Tax Service, reporting either break-even or losses. The company operated through its Turkish "clone," Mostrade Danyşmanlık Ticaret Limited Şirketi, also registered to Suleymanov.
The contacts through which Huseynli connected with the Erdoğan family were 34-year-old Mustafa Yigit Zeren and his father, Rıdvan Zeren, owners of a large company who handled his accounting in Turkey for many years and assisted him with his trading operations. They own the Zeren Group, with branches in London (Zeren Group and LAVAL ENERGY LTD), the Netherlands (Zeren Energy B.V.), Romania (GET Energy Trading S.R.L.), Hungary (Get-Energy Magyarország Kft./Holistic Energy Korlátolt Felelősségű Társaság), Switzerland (ZEREN GROUP SA), and elsewhere. Huseynli subsequently tried to portray Zeren as an ordinary small-time accountant, but in fact, this is not the case.
The Zerens did business with a classmate of Erdogan's son, Halil İbrahim Bakacı. In Turkey, he is known as Erdogan's wallet, managing his assets. Bakacı provided Mostrade with all the necessary licenses and permits, but in order to access the Turkish banking system, the Turkish Mostrade had to be transferred to Turkish citizen Mustafa Zeren. This was done on May 16, 2022.
To purchase oil, Roman Avdeev's Moscow Credit Bank provided Mostrade with a 20 billion ruble credit line—part directly and part through his Hong Kong company, Akida Trading Limited. Furthermore, on June 23, 2022, Zerena's accountants, through their firm, created the shipping company Eurasia Sealine Gemicilik ve Ticaret Limited Şirketi. Mostrade used it to ship billions of dollars' worth of oil.
According to the scheme's participants, Mostrade purchased Russian oil and sold it to India and China, with the proceeds from the sales going to Akida through the Turkish banks VakıfBank and Emlak Katılım Bank, which then transferred them to Russia. The Turkish banking system turned a blind eye to these maneuvers until December 2023, when the US threatened sanctions for assisting Russia in evading banking sanctions. Ultimately, the Turks cut off the flow of money to Roman Avdeev's bank. And then everything went awry, with Russia playing a major role.
First, "accountant" Zeren was forced to urgently resolve the issue of cash tranches and channel them through completely shady channels, through several UAE bank accounts—so that the enormous sums were effectively locked up exclusively in his name, a strong temptation.
Second, the participants in the scheme had long been negotiating the purchase of their own bank and in November had already signed an agreement to acquire Turkland Bank (T-BANK), owned by the Lebanese Hariris, whose families were friends with the Erdoğans. But then information came to light that the true owner of Mostrade and the scheme's co-author, Fuad Huseynli, was in a Moscow pretrial detention center on charges of banking fraud, and the deal fell through.
Thirdly, from prison, Huseynli was unable to fully control the scheme he had so carefully constructed or promptly resolve financial matters. He was arrested in connection with a criminal case opened in Russia based on Azerbaijani allegations of embezzlement of over 215 million rubles from the International Bank of Azerbaijan. Incredibly, the case was opened exactly two weeks after the formal transfer of Turkish Mostrade shares from Zal Suleymanov to Turkish citizen Mustafa Zeren. It appears the Russian side decided to hedge its bets and keep Huseynli on hand in case anything went wrong. Since August 2022, he had been under house arrest with permission to take walks and visit a doctor. He failed to comply, but investigators' patience somehow snapped only in early 2023. Huseynli was sent to pretrial detention. While he was in prison, his Turkish accountant, Zeren, traveled around the UAE, establishing channels for payment from India for several oil shipments. However, the money never reached Roman Avdeev's bank. In April 2024, a Russian court sentenced Huseynli's accomplice to 4.5 years in prison for embezzling funds from an Azerbaijani bank, while Huseynli himself received only 1.5 years. After taking into account his time in pretrial detention, he was released in the courtroom—and apparently sent off to search for the missing $600 million. And then something wonderful came to light: if the Zerens were solving anyone's problems through UAE banks, it was only their own. Relying on protection from the Erdogan family and the Russian side's demands for secrecy (who would sue and publicize illegal transactions?), the Zerens transferred money in several batches to accounts under their control. With the proceeds, the Zerens purchased a large chain of Alpet gas stations in Turkey (320 stations) from the Altınbash family. He appointed Akshin Mammadov, a former employee of the Azerbaijani company SOCAR, to head the company. We have already reported on its connections to Russian oil trading. Furthermore, the Zerens agreed to purchase Türkiye Petrolleri (approximately 800 gas stations across the country).
Despite the demands for secrecy, Roman Avdeev was not prepared to part with hundreds of millions of dollars. In May 2024, his Hong Kong company, Akida Trading Limited, filed a lawsuit in the Moscow Arbitration Court demanding the seizure of assets belonging to the Zerens' Mostrade. The case was won, despite Zeren claiming that his signature on the contracts with Avdeev's bank was forged, and that he was not even in Russia in September 2023. Interestingly, in September 2023, Fuad Huseynli violated the terms of his house arrest several times, disappearing from his home for several hours at a time. Some of the letters of credit bear the signature of Huseynli's driver, Zal Suleymanov, while others were signed on behalf of the Turkish trader by certain Yulia Rybalko and Tahir Narliev. Several credit lines were even opened in favor of the Dubai-based BLACK PEARL ENERGY TRADING L.L.C. (which was sanctioned by the US for trading Russian oil).
Akida also filed a lawsuit in Turkey, demanding $593.7 million in compensation from the Zerens. In response, Zeren Group publicly disavowed its partnership with Mostrade, claiming that all the fraudulent schemes were the work of Fuad Huseynli. Mustafa Zeren transferred the Turkish Mostrade to a certain Savas Ozsoy four days after Akida filed its claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court. The Zerens themselves, meanwhile, continued their operations as if nothing had happened.
What happened next is known from publications by Turkish journalists. A group of armed men arrived at the Zeren Group office in Istanbul, occupied the premises, and explained to Rydvan Zeren that he had to repay the debt to Avdeev. Under duress, Mustafa Zeren's father eventually signed a handwritten promissory note agreeing to pay the money: $475 million in monthly payments plus 25% of Zeren Group shares. The note was signed by Nikolai Valerievich Katorzhnov, CEO of Credit Bank of Moscow, and Yusuf Yatkin, CEO of Zeren Group, testified. This visit is linked to a confidential conversation between Roman Avdeev and one of the heads of Russian intelligence agencies. What he paid for this favor remains unknown.
Rydvan Zeren filed a complaint with Turkish law enforcement agencies, but no action has been taken on it at this time. Zeren himself simply disappeared. Considering that his second major office is a company in Switzerland, he is most likely hiding in Geneva.
As for Fuad Huseynli, he has previously been involved in highly questionable cases and was involved in a criminal case opened in Azerbaijan following IBA Bank's purchase of an oil field in Kazakhstan through a Luxembourg company. Huseynli was one of the founders of the Kazakh company involved in the transaction. The charges involved embezzlement, laundering, and misappropriation of funds. At that time, former IBA head Jagankhir Hajiyev received a lengthy prison sentence, but Azerbaijani law enforcement left Huseynli alone. He subsequently dismantled his network of Cypriot offshore companies.
This year, Fuad Huseynli, together with Azerbaijani native Mushvig Mehdiyev, registered Nusz sp. z o.o. in Poland, a company engaged in the restaurant business, logistics, and real estate.
