Russian companies are involved in secretive exports of oil products to North Korea, in violation of UN sanctions that Moscow itself supported, according to a new investigation.
For the past eight years, Russia and its fellow UN Security Council members have imposed economic sanctions on North Korea over the isolated dictatorship’s nuclear testing. This includes a limit on oil product exports to North Korea of 500,000 barrels per country per year.
But as Russia has become more isolated since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has expanded its economic and security ties with North Korea. The two countries share a full-fledged partnership in which Pyongyang provides soldiers and weapons for Moscow’s war, in return for benefits like increased oil exports.
Now, leaked financial records obtained by IStories, the Russian partner of the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), have revealed how Moscow has facilitated its oil exports to North Korea via secretive payment channels.
These channels range from a Moscow fuel-trading firm to a Far Eastern Russian oil exporter that says it specializes in selling beer, as well as financial intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates, according to IStories.
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Arms-for-oil trade
An investigation conducted last year by the Open Source Centre, a UK-based research group, estimated that Russia shipped more than double the annual allowable limit of oil to North Korea over just nine months in 2024.
Satellite imagery showed North Korean tankers making more than 40 trips to a port in the Russian Far East, carrying an estimated 1.3 million barrels of petroleum products.
In May 2024, the UK imposed sanctions on several Russian companies over what London called the “arms-for-oil trade” with North Korea. One of the firms was Toplivno-Bunkernaya Kompaniya (TBK), which operates out of the Vostochny Port, located at the far-eastern end of the Trans-Siberian railway.
Leaked TBK bank records obtained by IStories revealed that the company received regular payments from a Moscow-based fuel-trading company called Southern Railway Expedition (SRE) in 2024, including for “storage” and “transshipment.”
Hundreds of millions of rubles were routed through two banks: TsMRBANK, which the U.S. sanctioned in 2017 for working with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, and Promsvyazbank, a Russian state lender closely affiliated with the Russian Defense Ministry, IStories said.
Beer sales and front companies
Customs records obtained by IStories showed that Russia has also sent petroleum products to North Korea via rail, not just by sea, shipping at least 315,000 barrels this way in 2024 alone.
One of the largest exporters was a company based in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok called Inrostopt, whose main business activity, according to official company records, is beer sales.
Like SRE, Inrostopt has seen a dramatic rise in its revenues. At 666 million rubles (around €7 million), the company’s reported revenues were 350 times larger in 2024 than they were in 2021.
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As many as 40,000 barrels were shipped to a company based in Pyongyang called Future Electronic Company, which a UN expert panel in 2019 described as a “front company” for the Korean Mining Import and Export Corporation (KOMID), North Korea’s main arms exporter. The UN blacklisted KOMID in 2009.
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