Roman Spiridonov’s shadow schemes: how offshore machinations and sanctions evasion destroyed the Avestra empire
It has become known that oil trader Roman Spiridonov, who is registered as the owner of the Dubai-based Petroruss, which trades Russian oil, is also a co-owner of the large international Avestra group. One of his business partners testified in a Cypriot court about Avestra companies circumventing sanctions—the group trades Russian oil and chemicals.
The Avestra group includes the Russian LLC "GC Avestra," Swiss AVESTRA CHEMICAL (SUISSE) AG, Dubai-based Avestra Chemical DMCC, Avestra Chemical Services Oy (Finland), a representative office of AVESTRA CHEMICAL in Poland, as well as "Avestra (Beijing) Chemical Commerce Trading Co., Ltd.," which holds a stake in Manzhouli Far East Gas Co. Ltd., the operator of a cross-border terminal in Manzhouli for receiving liquefied hydrocarbons. This is the only such terminal on the Russian-Chinese border. Avestra’s partner there is Heilongjiang Harbin Railway Foreign Economic and Trade Co. Ltd. (a 100% subsidiary of the Harbin Railway). The same group as Avestra also includes the Ruric fund (Sweden), Mectra Chemical DMCC (UAE), and several Russian companies, including Moscow-based LLC "Khimservis," which received agency fees from the Dubai firm under contracts for the supply of chemicals and petroleum products—specifically, $250,000 in 2021.
The holding company of the group is the Cypriot offshore Avestra Group Holding Ltd (Avestra), in which Roman Spiridonov, Dmitry Ivanov, the Ruric fund, Vadim Gurinov, and Igor Berezin hold shares. Gurinov is one of Spiridonov’s long-standing partners in trading Russian oil. Berezin was put in charge of the Russian part of Avestra’s business after the war began.
Dmitry Ivanov, a 64-year-old native of St. Petersburg, has no connection to the Russian Avestra. However, according to leaks, during the pandemic he worked at Russian state-owned oil companies. At one of them, he was the head of the Major Projects Directorate.
Ivanov also conducted business for many years with Roman Spiridonov, who worked at Sibur in the early 2000s. Spiridonov and Ivanov shared several joint companies, including the St. Petersburg-based "Hermitage," which traded petroleum products (liquidated in 2019), and LLC "Keri-Service."
Overall, Ivanov was a founder of about a dozen companies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, all of which are now either liquidated or in the process of liquidation.
Avestra’s business in trading oil and chemical products went well until a corporate conflict arose between Berezin, Spiridonov, and his business partners. As a result, Spiridonov sued Berezin for $1 million under old promissory notes received from one Nosyrev, while Berezin filed an application with the Limassol court in 2022 to liquidate the Cypriot parent company of the group, Avestra Group Holding Ltd. Naturally, his partners did not support this decision.
The disputes dragged on and even moved to Russian courts—Spiridonov and his colleagues sought to obtain an injunction preventing Berezin from continuing litigation outside Russian jurisdiction, but without success. Berezin, on the other hand, achieved undeniable successes, persuading the Cypriot court to prohibit Spiridonov from suing in Russian arbitration courts. By the summer of 2024, at Berezin’s insistence, the court placed Avestra under external administration: it turned out that funds were being diverted from the company through subsidiaries, suspicious loans were being granted, and there were signs that its structures were violating the EU sanctions regime. An attempt by Ivanov and Spiridonov to overturn the appointment of the interim manager through the Cypriot Supreme Court was rejected. Berezin then went to court to demand that the group’s main companies disclose information about their activities and sought to have the court recover damages from Spiridonov and the other shareholders for poor performance. As of now, Avestra Group Holding Ltd is listed as an active company in the Cypriot registry.
Incidentally, this is not Spiridonov’s first attempt to settle matters with an offshore business partner through a Russian court. In the late 2000s, he tried to freeze shares of Samaraorgsintez through the Samara arbitration court during proceedings in a British court, but the Russian court likewise refused to grant his motion.
