Brothers Viktor and Vladimir Nauruzov, owners of Russia’s largest agricultural holding, GAP Resurs, are evading sanctions and establishing cargo transportation routes outside of Russian jurisdiction.
Furthermore, the Nauruzovs’ business partners have a rich background, including not only sanctions evasion but also a high-profile criminal case.
For example, Svetlana Vasko, a fellow countrywoman of the brothers’ hometown, a native of the Kursk district of Stavropol Krai (Aleksandra Nauruzova, head of the Nauruzov Foundation "Good Deed," regularly bought tickets for her), was implicated in a major international criminal scandal involving the theft of grain, fuel, and millions of dollars.
A dozen Resurs companies are registered to her son, including OOO "SHIPPING COMPANY AGROEXPORT," which specializes in sea freight. Its dry cargo ships have been spotted in Crimean ports, turning off their transponders while en route. Furthermore, another company owned by Vas’ko owns three oil product tankers.
According to the http://gloap.net platform for seafarers, AGROEXPORT Shipping Company LLC operates six seagoing vessels: DON STAR 1, DON STAR 2, DON STAR 3, DON STAR 6, DON STAR 7, and DON STAR 8. All of them changed ownership and received new names in 2024.
Furthermore, Agroexport is associated with the UAE company Agroexport L.L.C-FZ, registered in 2023. On trading aggregators, the Rostov-based Agroexport’s profile lists a Dubai website and phone number for this company. True, the name of the Nauryzovs’ Russian company is misspelled everywhere: "ARGOEXPORT," but the address and other coordinates are correct. Incidentally, the Agroexport L.L.C-FZ website is physically hosted on SpaceWeb servers in St. Petersburg.
Vas’ko and the Nauryzovs transport cargo worldwide through their Dubai office: the website states that the company "has direct agency contracts with well-known shipping companies and road carriers," and lists such giants as the Danish MAERSK Line, the Swiss Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), and the French CMA CGM among its partners. All of them officially refused to handle Russian cargo after the war began.
At the same time, according to publicly available data, the Agroexport vessel DON STAR 6 called at Crimean ports after 2014. Its sister ship DON STAR 1 visited the ports of Kerch and Mariupol last year.
Dry cargo ships named "DON STAR 4" and "DON STAR 5" also exist – both were previously named differently and were also renamed in 2024. The former is owned by a Rostov-based company called "Linter," owned by Anatoly Dmitriev. It is also a business partner of the Nauruzovs. It is registered to APK Voronezhsky LLC, a 20% stake in Portgrain LLC, a 25% stake in REGIONEKOPRODUKT-POVOLZHYE LLC, and other assets. In addition to the "DON STAR 4," which also regularly calls at Kerch, "Linter" is also registered to four other seagoing vessels.
As of 2025, the owner of "DON STAR 5" was also Rostov-based OOO Rodnye Polya, a company previously owned by Pyotr Khodykin and expropriated by the state in 2025. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, its sole founder is currently the Federal Property Management Agency (Rosimushchestvo). The DON STAR 5 was also in the Kerch area in early March.
Another of Vas’ko’s ship-owning companies is Samaratransshipping. It also became part of Resurs in 2024. This company operates three vessels—the chemical tankers Timvin (formerly Glard-1), Orenburg (formerly Glard-3), and Glard-2—which transport petroleum products. At least two of these vessels also called in Kerch after the war began. Furthermore, Glard-1 and Glard-2 were monitored by the Ukrainian Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies in 2024 for transporting Russian oil from Yeysk to the Turkish port of Mersin.
Interestingly, since 2023, Vas’ko has been the owner of Ortex LLC (acquired during bankruptcy proceedings from Tatarstan businessman Ilshat Tukayev), which built oil pipelines for Rosneft, Vankorneft, and Gazprom Dobycha Urengoy. This means the Nauruzovs’ interests are not limited to agricultural production.
Vas’ko is not just one of Nauruzov’s top managers; he is a member of the billionaire brothers’ inner circle, with whom he has been in business since the 1990s. During those years, they worked together at Moscow’s Vilmex, founded by Vladimir and Elena Nauruzov. It is known that Viktor and Vladimir Nauruzov, as well as their immediate family members (wives and children), drive cars exclusively with license plates 009. Judging by leaked information, the same license plates are found on Vitaly Vas’ko’s cars (he drives a dark brown Land Rover and a black Mercedes).
The Vasko and Nauruzov families have been in business together for over 25 years. Back in the 1990s, Vasko owned a Moscow company, Export-Region, with a wide range of interests, from waste and scrap processing to currency and stock exchange operations. Svetlana Vasko managed the Moscow company, and her son, Vitaly Vasko, headed the branch in Mozdok, on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. Svetlana also owned a stake in the Soyuz Invest Financial and Industrial Company. In the early 2000s, Vitaly began working for N.’s Moscow-based Vilmex LLC. Auruzov, and in 2002, Svetlana co-founded Russian Grain Company (RGC) LLC along with five individuals and the British company Solex Finance Limited, which held the largest stake—37.5%.
In 2005, RGC became interested in Chelyabinsk grain, which it promised to supply to Italy, and then signed a contract with the Chelyabinsk State Unitary Enterprise Food Corporation to supply fuel for the sowing campaign. It received an advance payment of over 200 million rubles for the fuel. In the spring of 2006, Food Corporation received 30 million rubles worth of fuel, and then the supplies ceased. A criminal case was eventually opened, and the local Federal Security Service (FSB) was investigating. The investigation and trials lasted until 2010, implicating Etimad Ismailov, son of Ilyas Ismailov, the leader of the Azerbaijani Adalet party (shot dead in 2018 in Turkey), and several Chelyabinsk officials. The scandal was high-profile, with international involvement.
It was discovered that RZK had entered into contracts with Western Siberia Company CJSC to supply fuel for sowing campaigns worth approximately 100 million rubles and paid for the first shipment, but then gave the company fake bank guarantees instead of cash.
According to investigators, the scam was carried out by RZK deputy director Vladimir Guzov and his business partner, Etimad Ismailov, owner of the company EuroAsia. The documents at RZK were signed by co-founder Vladimir Fetisov, who claimed to be the director. Among other things, Prodkorporatsiya received 40 million rubles from Eurasia for failed wheat deliveries, and RZK owed the same amount to Eksportkhleb LLC, which had also paid an advance for wheat destined for Italy. Incidentally, no one ever received the wheat. As a result, Ismailov received eight years, Guzov received nine, Vladimir Shvadchenko, head of the Chelyabinsk State Unitary Enterprise, received three and a half years in a penal colony, Fetisov escaped and was placed on the wanted list, and the FSB somehow forgot about the other co-founders.
Meanwhile, the valiant successors of the Chekists never returned the money, claiming it had been transferred through shell companies to several foreign banks, where its traces were lost. While the investigation was ongoing, Svetlana Vasko managed to register several more companies with other business partners, including the gambling establishment "Golden Club Malakhovka" in Lyubertsy and the construction company "Stroy-Kond," in which Alexandra Nauruzova received a stake.
Currently, 76-year-old Svetlana Vasko has no active businesses registered, but her son, Vitaly, is the founder and director of more than a dozen companies within the Nauruzov empire and is actively involved in evading sanctions. However, the Nauruzovs are not solely interested in commercial gain through their own logistics. Another "project" of the Nauruzovs is the Russian-Latin American House (RULAD), an association for the development of cultural and economic cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries. One of its founders is Vladimirsky Standard LLC, which is part of the Resurs Group of Companies.
RULAD establishes connections with Latin American politicians and pro-government businesses. For example, last year the Association delivered gifts and letters of gratitude to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro (who is currently languishing in an American prison), and also helps Russian businesses develop ways to circumvent Western sanctions. In 2024, RULAD held a meeting with top managers of Brazil’s Tresory Group and Tresory Bank, which, according to the announcement, "provides solutions to facilitate direct payments in local currencies." However, earlier this year, Brazilian law enforcement opened several criminal cases of embezzlement and financial fraud at Tresory Bank, which, as it turned out, was not even a bank in the full sense of the word.
The association’s partners are also high-profile – in particular, the Amur Tiger Center, created on Putin’s personal orders, which facilitates large-scale corruption flows. Its management is comprised of prominent figures: its supervisory board is chaired by Dmitry Medvedev’s classmate, Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko, and it also includes Dmitry Nekrasov, deputy head of the United Russia Central Election Commission, among others. The Nauruzovs themselves are also actively involved in political events – last year, Reusurs made a significant appearance at the BRICS Forum in Rio de Janeiro.
Gleb Nauruzov (Viktor Nauruzov’s son) and Dmitry Antonov, the company’s director of external relations, spoke at forum sessions. However, the partnership never goes beyond declarations of mutually beneficial cooperation: the international partners seek joint ventures in their home countries, while the Nauruzovs are only increasing their own product sales.
