Leaked Records Point to Sanctions-Busting Oil Network Supplying DPRK

An intricate network of Russian, North Korean, and Gulf-based companies has been quietly helping funnel hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to North Korea in apparent violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a new investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The probe, based on leaked Russian banking and customs records obtained by OCCRP’s Russian partner IStories together with the U.K.-based Open Source Center, sheds rare light on the payment chains and obscure firms behind oil shipments that Washington, London and U.N. experts have warned are undermining sanctions on Pyongyang.

Since 2017, U.N. Security Council resolutions have capped each country’s annual exports of refined petroleum products to North Korea at 500,000 barrels. But the Open Source Center previously estimated, using satellite imagery, that Russia may have shipped around 1.3 million barrels in just nine months last year, more than double the annual limit, as North Korean tankers made more than 40 trips to a Far East Russian port, OCCRPreported.

The newly leaked records detail how those flows were allegedly financed.

At the center of the maritime route is Toplivno-Bunkernaya Kompaniya (TBK), an oil terminal operator near Vostochny Port in Russia’s Far East. In early March 2024, a North Korean tanker, Paek Yang San 1, docked there, loaded petroleum products, and sailed back to North Korea, according to OCCRP.

The White House later accused Moscow of breaching sanctions by shipping 165,000 barrels of refined petroleum from Vostochny to North Korea in March alone, and the U.K. sanctioned several Russian firms in May over what it called an “arms-for-oil” trade with Pyongyang. One of the sanctioned firms was TBK, OCCRP noted.

Leaked bank records reviewed by news outlet show that TBK received a stream of payments in 2024 from a previously obscure Moscow-based fuel trader, Southern Railway Expedition (SRE), ostensibly for “storage” and “transshipment.” The timing of those transfers closely matches the movements of North Korean tankers flagged by the Open Source Center’s satellite-based analysis, OCCRP said.

SRE’s first transfer to TBK in 2024, worth just over 21 million rubles (about $229,000), came in late February, two weeks before the Paek Yang San 1 arrived at Vostochny. Four more payments totaling 115 million rubles followed in March and April, when North Korean ships made 23 calls at the port.

A further 11 transfers, worth nearly 108 million rubles, went through later in the year as North Korean tankers made 27 additional trips, according to the leaked records cited by OCCRP.

Most of the payments were routed through TsMRBANK, a Russian lender previously sanctioned by the United States for dealings with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and more recently accused of working with North Korean entities. The rest moved through Promsvyazbank, a state-owned bank closely aligned with Russia’s Defense Ministry that also extended SRE a loan of nearly 1 billion rubles (around $9 million) in 2024, according to the leaked records.

Behind SRE is a web of politically connected suppliers and owners, OCCRP found. The company buys petroleum products from Slavyansk ECO in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region, co-owned by regional lawmaker and ruling United Russia party member Robert Paranyants. It also buys from Forteinvest, linked to oil veteran Iskender Khalilov and the Gutseriev business family, and from Energocity, whose shareholders include a former Krasnodar customs chief and an ex-business partner of the son of a former St. Petersburg governor.

The investigation also reveals an alleged second route for Russian oil into North Korea: rail shipments along the Soviet-era Khasan–Rajin line that connects Russia’s Far East with a North Korean port.