Oil tanker seized by US linked to two Kremlin allies. The Moldovan oligarch Ilan Şor, among them
The Marinera tanker, detained by US forces, has ties to two Kremlin allies: fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor and former Ukrainian parliamentarian Viktor Baranski, according to an RFE/RL (Free Europe) investigation.
Shor is the Kremlin's main tool in destabilizing Chisinau. PHOTO: Facebook.com
According to the investigation carried out by RFE/RL's (Free Europe) “Sistema” project, the tanker, renamed from Bella 1 to Marinera, also changed ownership. Thus, instead of a Turkish company under American sanctions, the ship ended up in the possession of the Russian company Burevestmarine from Ryazan.
The company was registered in July 2025, with Ilia Bugai, a 39-year-old Russian citizen, as its owner. He also heads the company Rusneftehimtorg, which specializes in the supply of fuel, including for oil tankers. Among the company's main clients are several companies from outside Russia, which, however, have a common element: they are owned by women living in the Republic of Moldova.
“Although he read the questions that Sistema sent him via messenger, Bugai did not answer,” it is shown in the article.
At least two of the women living in the Republic of Moldova were the protagonists of some journalistic investigations, being described as fair “interposed persons” in an empire of ghost ships used by Russia to circumvent Western sanctions on the oil trade. Behind this empire is the former Ukrainian deputy Viktor Baranski.
In 2021, entities associated with Baranski and his unofficial oil holding company were sanctioned by the United States for transporting Venezuelan oil.
In November 2020, Rusneftehimtorg obtained a loan of 300 million rubles (about $3.7 million) from the Russian bank Nefteprombank. Half a month later, the same bank granted a similar loan to the company Recimortrans, behind which Baranski was also said to be. He also did not respond to the requests of the journalists of the cited media source.
Six months later, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation began to suspect Nefteprombank of transferring its assets abroad and revoked its license. The bank later went bankrupt, and the judicial liquidator started debt recovery procedures. In 2022, Rusneftehimtorg and Recimortrans were summoned to repay their loans, which they did by March 2023.
In both cases, the debt settlement was carried out according to the same scheme: the debtors assigned to the creditor, on account of the financial obligations, claim rights on a third company, Diamand Estate. Rusneftehimtorg, Recimortrans and the general director of Diamand Estate did not come up with a point of view regarding this information, the authors of the investigation also note.
In 2022, Diamand Estate took over two television stations from the Republic of Moldova, previously owned by Igor Ceaika, the son of the former Prosecutor General of Russia, Iuri Ceaika, and Vadim Ciubara, an associate of the former Moldovan President Igor Dodon.
Later, the two television stations were associated with Ilan Şor, suspected of involvement in the withdrawal of 2.4 million euros from Nefteprombank.
Considered an instrument of the Kremlin to destabilize Chisinau, Ilan Șor fled the Republic of Moldova in 2019, where he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for involvement in bank fraud. He first took refuge in Israel, then in Russia, where he obtained Russian citizenship.
Pro-Russian Ilan Shor is associated with the Russian state bank Promsviazibank, and the launch of his cryptocurrency in the fall of 2025 was even attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And former Ukrainian MP Viktor Baranski has ties to the Kremlin. In Ukraine, he was a member of the party led by Viktor Medvedchiuk, Vladimir Putin's crony. After the outbreak of Russia's war against Ukraine, Baranski was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship and moved to the Russian Federation.
