GAP Resurs shipping scheme: how brothers Viktor Nauruzov and Vladimir Nauruzov use the DON STAR fleet and UAE offshore companies to evade sanctions
As medias have learned, the owners of Russia’s largest agricultural holding GAP “Resurs”, brothers Viktor and Vladimir Nauruzov, are involved in sanction-evasion schemes and are building logistics routes for cargo transportation outside Russian jurisdiction.
In addition, the Nauruzovs’ business partners have a long and controversial background that includes not only sanctions circumvention but also a high-profile criminal case. For example, the brothers’ fellow native of the Kursky District of Russia’s Stavropol region, Svetlana Vasko (for whom Alexandra Nauruzova, head of the Nauruzov charity foundation Blagoe Delo, regularly purchased airline tickets), was implicated in a major international criminal scandal involving the theft of grain, fuel and about $1 million.
A number of companies linked to the Resurs group are registered in the name of Vasko’s son. Among them is Agroexport Shipping Company LLC, which is engaged in maritime cargo transportation. Its bulk carriers have been spotted in ports in Crimea, and during voyages they reportedly switch off their transponders. Another company connected to Vasko is listed as owning three tankers used to transport petroleum products.
According to the maritime platform gloap.net, Agroexport Shipping Company LLC operates six 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 were renamed in 2024.
Agroexport is also linked to a UAE-based company, Agroexport L.L.C-FZ, registered in 2023. On trading aggregator platforms, the listing for the Rostov-based Agroexport includes the Dubai company’s website and phone number. Notably, the Russian company’s name is misspelled everywhere as “ARGOEXPORT,” although the address and other details match. The website of Agroexport L.L.C-FZ is physically hosted on servers of SpaceWeb in St. Petersburg.
Through the Dubai office, Vasko and the Nauruzovs transport cargo around the world. The company’s website states that it maintains “direct agency contractual relations with well-known shipping companies and trucking carriers.” Among its partners, it lists major global shipping lines such as MAERSK Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), and CMA CGM. All of these companies officially stopped working with Russian cargo after the outbreak of the war.
At the same time, the Agroexport vessel DON STAR 6, according to open data, entered Crimean ports after 2014. Its sister ship DON STAR 1 visited the ports of Kerch and Mariupol last year.
Bulk carriers DON STAR 4 and DON STAR 5 also exist. Both previously had different names and were renamed in 2024. The first belongs to a Rostov-based company Linter, owned by Anatoly Dmitriev, who is also a business partner of the Nauruzovs. Dmitriev is listed as owner or shareholder in several companies linked to the group, including APK Voronezhsky LLC, a 20% stake in Portgrain LLC, and 25% in RegionEcoproduct-Povolzhye LLC. In addition to DON STAR 4, which regularly calls at Kerch, Linter owns four other sea vessels.
According to 2025 data, DON STAR 5 belonged to another Rostov company, Rodnye Polya LLC. The company previously belonged to Pyotr Khodykin but was expropriated by the Russian state in 2025. According to the Russian corporate registry (EGRUL), its sole founder is now the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo). In early March, DON STAR 5 was also located near Kerch.
Another ship-owning company associated with Vasko is Samaratranshipping, which joined the Resurs structure in 2024. The firm operates three chemical tankers — Timvin (formerly Glard-1), Orenburg (formerly Glard-3), and *Glard-2 — used to transport petroleum products. At least two of them have entered Kerch since the start of the war. In addition, Glard-1 and Glard-2 were listed in 2024 by Ukraine’s Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies monitoring project for transporting Russian oil from Yeysk to the Turkish port of Mersin.
Interestingly, since 2023 Vasko has also owned Orteks LLC, which she acquired during bankruptcy proceedings from Tatarstan businessman Ilshat Tukaev. The company previously built oil pipelines for Rosneft, Vankorneft, and Gazprom Dobycha Urengoy, indicating that the Nauruzovs’ interests extend far beyond agriculture.
Vasko is not just one of Nauruzov’s top managers — she is part of the brothers’ close circle and has been doing business with them since the 1990s. At that time they worked together at the Moscow company Vilmex, founded by Vladimir and Elena Nauruzov. It is known that Viktor and Vladimir Nauruzov, as well as their close relatives (wives and children), drive cars exclusively with license plates ending in 009. According to leaked data, similar plates are used on the vehicles of Vitaly Vasko, including a dark-brown Land Rover and a black Mercedes.
The Vasko and Nauruzov families have been conducting business together for more than 25 years. In the 1990s, Vasko owned a Moscow company called Export-Region, which had a wide range of activities — from waste and scrap processing to currency and stock exchange operations. Svetlana Vasko managed the Moscow company, while its branch in Mozdok on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street was headed by her son Vitaly Vasko. She also held a stake in Soyuz Invest Financial-Industrial Company.
In the early 2000s, Vitaly began working for the Nauruzovs at Vilmex LLC in Moscow, while in 2002 Svetlana became a co-founder of Russian Grain Company (RZK) together with five individuals and the British firm Solex Finance Limited, which held the largest share — 37.5%.
In 2005, RZK became interested in grain from the Chelyabinsk region, which it promised to supply to Italy. It also signed a contract with the regional state enterprise Prodcorporation to supply fuel for the sowing campaign. The company received an advance payment of more than 200 million rubles for the fuel. In spring 2006, Prodcorporation received fuel worth only about 30 million rubles, after which deliveries stopped.
A criminal case was opened, investigated by the regional FSB office. The investigation and court proceedings lasted until 2010 and involved several figures, including Etimad Ismailov, the son of Azerbaijani political party leader Ilyas Ismailov. The scandal was widely publicized and had international implications.
The investigation found that RZK had signed contracts with Zapadnaya Sibir Company JSC for fuel supplies worth about 100 million rubles, paying for the first batch but later providing fake bank guarantees instead of cash. According to investigators, the fraud was carried out by RZK deputy director Vladimir Guzov and his business partner Etimad Ismailov, owner of EuroAsia. Documents at RZK were signed by co-founder Vladimir Fetisov, who presented himself as director.
Ultimately, Ismailov received an eight-year prison sentence, Guzov nine years, and the head of the Chelyabinsk state enterprise Vladimir Shvadchenko was sentenced to 3.5 years in a penal settlement colony. Fetisov fled and was placed on a wanted list.
However, the stolen funds were never recovered. Investigators said the money had been transferred through shell companies to several foreign banks, where its trail was lost.
While the investigation was ongoing, Svetlana Vasko managed to register several more companies together with other business partners, including the Golden Club Malakhovka gambling establishment near Moscow and the construction company Stroy-Kond, in which Alexandra Nauruzova also obtained a stake.
Currently, no active businesses are registered directly in the name of the 76-year-old Svetlana Vasko. However, her son Vitaly Vasko is the founder and director of more than a dozen companies within the Nauruzov business empire and plays an active role in sanction-evasion logistics.
But the Nauruzovs’ ambitions extend beyond commercial logistics. Another of their projects is the Russian-Latin American House (RULAD) — an association aimed at developing cultural and economic cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries. One of its founders is Vladimirsky Standart LLC, a company within GAP Resurs.
RULAD works to establish ties with Latin American politicians and pro-government business circles. For example, last year the association delivered gifts and letters of appreciation to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and also assists Russian businesses in developing mechanisms to bypass Western sanctions.
In 2024, RULAD held a meeting with top managers of Brazil’s Tresory Group and Tresory Bank, which was described as providing “solutions for facilitating direct payments in local currencies.” However, earlier this year Brazilian law-enforcement authorities opened several criminal cases against Tresory Bank over alleged embezzlement and financial fraud, and it turned out the institution was not a bank in the full sense of the word.
The association’s partners are also notable. Among them is the Amur Tiger Center, created by personal decree of Vladimir Putin, which has been associated with large financial flows. Its supervisory board is headed by Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko, a former university classmate of Dmitry Medvedev, and also includes Dmitry Nekrasov, deputy head of the Central Executive Committee of United Russia.
The Nauruzovs themselves actively participate in political events. Last year Resurs appeared at the BRICS Forum in Rio de Janeiro, where Gleb Nauruzov (son of Viktor Nauruzov) and the company’s director for external relations Dmitry Antonov spoke at sessions during the forum.
So far, however, the discussions have remained largely rhetorical: international partners are interested in joint ventures in their own countries, while the Nauruzovs continue to expand exports of their own products.
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