As uncovered by media, an adviser to the head of the International Judo Federation (IJF), Marius Vizer, is connected to the trade in Russian oil and grain. Marius Vizer himself is a close friend of Vladimir Putin, who served as Honorary President of the IJF until February 28, 2022.
Since late 2023, the position of adviser to Vizer has been held by Almaz Alsenov. He is a citizen of Kazakhstan and a former professional judoka who, in the early 2000s, obtained two degrees in corporate management and geophysical engineering and then moved to Switzerland. In 2015, together with his sister Anel Alsenova, he founded Harvest Group there, along with several affiliated companies, including Harvest Commodities SA. The company became engaged in international trading and, according to official statements, focused on the agribusiness sector — before the war it actively traded with, among others, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia.
Since December 2023, Harvest Group has also been closely linked to Vizer and the International Judo Federation through partnership agreements, information about which is posted on the Federation’s website. Alsenov himself additionally took the position of IJF Commissioner for Partnerships and Promotion. At the same time, about 45% of Harvest Commodities SA, according to the Swiss research organization Public Eye, was controlled through two other legal entities by a businessman named Nils Troost. He is a major oil trader who built his fortune before the war on trading Russian oil and was unable to abandon it after 2022. Troost is included in the EU, Swiss, and UK sanctions lists, and his Swiss company Paramount Energy & Commodities, through which he conducted most of his operations, has been in liquidation since March 2024. However, it has a twin sister company in the UAE — PARAMOUNT ENERGY & COMMODITIES DMCC — which has also fallen under sanctions.
As for Harvest Commodities SA, which was owned by Almaz Alsenov and Nils Troost and was registered at the same address as Paramount Energy & Commodities, it was previously called Sun Oil SA. Until 2009, its management included very experienced top executives: Alexander Berezikov, a former employee of RT-Khimkompozit (a subsidiary of Rostec) and former head of Rosneft’s procurement division, as well as his Rosneft colleague Elena Alekseeva. After leaving Alsenov’s company, they founded their own firm, ASTRA ENERGY GROUP SA, based in Switzerland and Dubai, which is engaged, unsurprisingly, in trading Russian oil. It is known that at least until March 2023 its main supplier was the Russian company OIL TECHNOLOGIES LLC (part of Mikhail Gutseriev’s Safmar Group and owner of the Afipsky Oil Refinery). However, Swiss journalists for some reason believe that the Dubai-based “Astra” also trades in grain.
In 2022, Harvest Commodities SA publicly supported Ukraine and even chartered two vessels that transported cargoes of corn to Turkey from the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk under the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Harvest Commodities SA issued press releases about transporting Ukrainian grain up until 2024, after which Troost announced that he had nevertheless fallen under sanctions and suspended the initiative as, evidently, meaningless. At the same time, he continued purchasing grain in Russia.
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The adviser to the head of the International Judo Federation also has other companies in Switzerland that have long-standing and close ties to Russia. For example, AR Ascent Resources SA, a stake in which, according to the Swiss register, belonged until 2019 to Rashid Korsakov from the Volgograd region. Last year, he ranked third among the region’s wealthiest businessmen with a fortune of 5.85 billion rubles. His largest asset is the Zerno Zavolzhya Group.
Notably, vessels belonging to Harvest Group SA operate on routes between Russia and Iran — such a voyage by the dry cargo ship Harvest Legacy in 2024 was tracked by Public Eye specialists. Alsenov also turned out to have business interests in Iran: the company Harvest Pars Middle East was registered in Tehran in 2016. What exactly his ships were transporting remains unknown.
Currently, the Swiss company Harvest Commodities SA is in the process of liquidation. It appears that the Kazakh judoka has decided to reorient this part of his business toward the UAE and Iran.
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