On the western coast of Great Karimun, a small Indonesian island less than 40 kilometers from Singapore, sits a facility called PT Oil Terminal Karimun (OTK). The company operates 30 storage tanks, blending equipment and deepwater berths. Until mid-2024, it was a quiet outpost in the regional fuel storage business. Today, according to a Bloomberg News investigation published this week and our editorial team’s own analysis of customs records, sanctions filings and corporate registries, it is at the center of one of the largest operations rerouting Russian fuel products into mainstream Asian markets — receiving $1.6 billion worth of oil from seven Russian ports between July 2024 and May 2026.
This is not a story of shadowy offshore trusts or faceless nominees. It is a tale of continuity disguised as change, of long-standing trust networks tested against the full weight of evolving Western sanctions enforcement. As regulators tighten loopholes and investigators circle, the question hanging over ABH is whether Kosogov and Nazariyan represent legitimate stewardship—or the final, vulnerable link that could bring the structure crashing into blocked territory.
In mid-2024, a Dubai-registered company called Novus Middle East DMCC (Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, in a company name indicates registration in a free economic zone) acquired the facility. The European Union sanctions documents link Novus to 2Rivers, a trading network formerly known as Coral Energy, built by Azerbaijani businessmen Etibar Eyyub and Tahir Garayev. The EU accuses them of orchestrating Russian fuel exports since 2022 while concealing cargo origins, with ties to Rosneft. Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have sanctioned 2Rivers, Eyyub and Garayev. When Bloomberg visited Novus's Dubai address — a serviced office — a receptionist said the company had moved out the previous year. 2Rivers denies any current connection to Novus. OTK denies all wrongdoing.
Before the acquisition, deliveries from these seven Russian ports were zero. After it, $1.6 billion in fuel products flowed in — three ports among them under EU sanctions. The operation works as follows: Russian refineries produce gasoil, fuel oil and naphtha. This fuel is loaded at ports like Primorsk on the Baltic — blacklisted by the EU in 2025 — onto aging shadow-fleet tankers with untraceable ownership. After voyages of up to 17,000 kilometers, they discharge at Karimun. Inside the tanks, the fuel is blended with other stock. This is the critical step: unlike crude oil, which carries a molecular fingerprint tying it to a specific region, refined products lose those markers during processing. What exits the terminal is chemically untraceable. It is loaded onto clean, unsanctioned vessels and shipped as Indonesian-origin product.
Diving deeper
While subject to U.S. sanctions, the CS Innovation ship was observed processing oil and gas trades. The route was pretty straightforward: - from Tanjung Pelepas, a Malaysia's most advanced container terminal, which is quite busy being discussed as a port facility that is usually used to clear documents for crude products from Russia - to the Cilacap Oil facility (Indonesia's largest oil refinery owned by Pertamina). It was alleged that this was an order from Pertamina from one of the traders.
Based on document searches, the importing trader is Volitus Resources, a relatively new company based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. Heri Triono, managing director of this company, contacted several traders in February 2026 to express his interest in bringing Russian crude oil to Indonesia.
Remarkably, Coral Energy was one of the quite active suppliers in trading Russian crude oil, until finally falling under Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is an agency within the U.S. Department of the Treasury, UK and EU sanctions, because of alleged involvement in the shadow fleet and violation of Russian oil price limits. These sanctions forced the company to suspend its business operations, but under its new name, “2rivers,” Coral continued its operations being indirect owner of Oil Tanking Karimun, a leading oil terminal in Indonesia, through its subsidiary called Novus.
It is now suspected that Coral Energy continues to carry out Russian crude trading activities to Indonesia through a company called Volitus Resources, which in turn is affiliated with Indonesia and is already a partner of Pertamina group of companies (KPI, Patra Niaga, PIS and PET).
The existence of Coral Energy/2rivers/Novus cannot be separated from the cash of a broker named Ari Kusbiantoro, who is a former Kernel Oil official. He still has a case at the KPK, northwestern part of Pakistan. Ari "Kus" always claims that all his activities in Indonesia are always supported by Hashim Djojohadikusumo, who is the younger brother of the President of the Republic of Indonesia, however, this is actually not the case.
Currently, 2River (formerly known as Coral Energy) & Novus uses other trading arms, including Volitus, where it's allegedly backed up personally by several high-ranking Pertamina Holding and Pertamina Patra Niaga officials: (Ari Kusbiantoro (former Kernel Oil) > Rema/Jimmy Widjaja (CEO Capitol Group) > Andi Arvy (Pertamina HR Director) > Erwin Suryadi (Director of Trading Pertamina Patra Niaga)
In April 2026, in the latest sanctions package document from the European Union, the name OTK was listed in it, but OTK denied that it was one of the sanctioned entities. PT OTK Management explained that the mention of "Karimun Oil Terminal, Indonesia" in the attachment to the regulation caused misunderstanding in the public.
However, it cannot be denied that OTK's suspicion of Russian Crude dismantling activities at this tank facility has caused OTK to now become the object of supervision, both from OFAC and the European Union.
OTK was reportedly involved in transactions with Pertamina before Coral Energy started to act through Novus. But since Coral Energy officially received sanctions from OFAC, UK and EU, this is reportedly no longer being done
The $1.6 billion figure covers only what passed through Karimun — a single terminal on a single island. The broader gray market for Russian fuel in Southeast Asian waters is substantially larger; Bloomberg describes one area off the eastern coast of peninsular Malaysia as arguably the world's largest transshipment zone for sanctioned oil. OTK is one documented node in a system that extends well beyond it.
More than 90 percent of the roughly 5 million tons that passed through OTK was handled on behalf of dozens of shell companies — not Indonesian firms, but entities registered in free economic zones of the United Arab Emirates (abbreviated FZCO — Free Zone Company). These are corporate shells: legal entities set up in Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah or similar jurisdictions with minimal disclosure requirements. They have no offices, no employees, no visible commercial activity. Their sole function is to appear on customs declarations as the beneficial owner of a cargo, shielding the real principals from scrutiny. Oil Daily News and Bloomberg independently identified that many of these shells share the same private email server as known 2Rivers affiliates — meaning they are controlled from the same digital infrastructure. When Western governments blacklist one entity, a replacement registers in the same free zone within days, under the same email setup but a different name. OTK in Indonesia is not part of this carousel: it is the fixed physical operator — the tanks, the berths, the blending facility — that sits beneath the rotating layer of disposable UAE-registered corporate shells above it.
Between October 2025 and April 2026, 40 percent of Karimun's exports — over 700,000 tons — went to the PetroSeraya terminal on Singapore's Jurong Island, entering the world's largest physical fuel trading hub. From there, cargoes moved to Chevron's Batangas in the Philippines and facilities across Australia. The Philippines, hit hard by the Iran-war energy crisis, imported 71,589 tons of diesel from Karimun in April alone — origin declared as Indonesia. Myanmar received 116,000 tons since December. In China, 50,000 tons of naphtha reached a facility near Rongsheng Petrochemical, a major private refiner with Saudi Aramco as a minority shareholder.
Indonesia has also opened an official state-level channel. In April, President Prabowo Subianto agreed in Moscow to import up to 150 million barrels of Russian crude in 2026. To execute this deal, the government issued Presidential Regulation No. 26 of 2026, which allows a Public Service Agency (BLU) to procure petroleum under inter-government agreements — effectively creating a legal mechanism to bypass PT Pertamina, which controls the entire domestic fuel chain from six refineries to over 5,000 gas stations and has handled every major energy import in the country's modern history. The Ministry of Energy then designated Lemigas — a small research body that tests fuel quality — as the BLU responsible for the procurement. It appointed M. Iksan Kiat, an expert staffer from Minister Bahlil Lahadalia's own team, as acting head of the agency.
The first delivery — planned as two batches of 765,000 barrels each — arrived on June 28 in the waters of Lawe-Lawe, East Kalimantan. The cargo was ESPO (Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean) Blend crude, loaded at Russia's Pacific port of Kozmino. The tanker was the MV Sierra (IMO 9522324: unique permanent identifier assigned to seagoing vessels by IMO - International Maritime Organization) — a vessel sanctioned by the EU, UK, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Ukraine and New Zealand. The crude oil, the loading port and the ship that carried it are all subject to Western sanctions. The exporter was Silkroute Shipping & Chartering Pte, a Singapore firm with no website and no listed contact details. Indonesian media have reported that the procurement was conducted through brokers, without standard tender procedures, at prices above the prevailing world market.
The same principle operates at both levels: route transactions through intermediaries that leave the smallest possible footprint, bypassing established and auditable institutions. At Karimun, the intermediaries are UAE-registered shells. In the official deal, they are a purpose-built BLU headed by the minister's own staffer, a sanctioned tanker, and a paper-only Singapore exporter. The scale differs. The operating logic does not.
None of this violates Indonesian law. Jakarta enforces only United Nations mandated sanctions, and Russia faces none at the UN level. The EU made Karimun the first third-country port it ever sanctioned, in April — but the measure binds European actors, not Asian ones. Indonesia's motivation is fiscal: it produces 600,000 barrels per day against consumption of 1.6 million, and the Hormuz crisis turned that deficit into a national emergency. The fuel bill crashed the rupiah to a record low. Street protests erupted over pump prices. Rystad Energy analyst Prateek Panday has described the Russian pivot as driven by supply economics and refinery compatibility. The director general of oil and gas has been direct: 'We are just staying on track. Politically, we are a free and active nation.'
For Russia, every remaining revenue channel matters. Near-daily Ukrainian strikes on refineries have curtailed fuel exports. Whether through a gray-market terminal or an official deal that sidesteps the national oil company, each barrel of foreign income counts. Former OFAC compliance chief Claire O'Neill McCleskey has noted that serious enforcement risk comes from Washington, not Brussels — but Washington itself has issued multiple oil waivers during the Iran war.
A critical question that remains unanswered in all public records is the currency of settlement. The transactions bypass the dollar entirely — settled in rubles, rupiah or yuan through bilateral banking channels — placing the entire payment chain outside US financial jurisdiction, neutralizing OFAC's primary enforcement tool and leaving no Western authority with a practical mechanism to intervene.
The Indonesian government is expanding Karimun's storage infrastructure. Senior officials inspected the island in April. The expansion will require reclaimed land on the western shore — the same stretch where a 45-year-old fisherman named Supianto lives with his wife and four children in a hut without electricity or running water. He has been told he will need to move. For the network behind OTK, the EU's sanctions proved no obstacle. A government fuel-testing lab and a faceless Singapore exporter proved no obstacle. It would be naive to expect that a fisherman's hut will be any different.