Igor Soglaev v. Etibar Eyyub, Tahir Garayev, and others

Igor Soglaev, a former senior executive at Deutsche Bank in Russia and at Rosneft and an adviser to Igor Sechin, set up DIA33 in Dubai to resell Russian diesel to distributors in Brazil. In late 2023, DIA33 bought diesel from the Dubai company Serene Resources, and in early 2024 it entered into a partnership with traders of the Coral network (renamed 2Rivers in 2024) of the Azerbaijani businessmen Etibar Eyyub and Tahir Garayev, who after 2022 became some of Rosneft’s main oil traders and are under UK and EU sanctions. Relations soured when a Brazilian port refused, because of the vessel’s age, to accept a tanker carrying diesel worth tens of millions of dollars, and the parties could not agree on paying for the delay. The seller accused DIA33 of failing to pay for the fuel and misappropriating it, and in early 2026 an arbitral tribunal in Dubai ordered DIA33 to pay $42M. Soglaev claims that Serene Resources was linked to Coral and that the partnership was a ruse: the traders learned DIA33’s clients and contract terms and then offered fuel to those clients directly at a discount. The director of Serene Resources denies any link to Coral. Soglaev brought claims in Dubai and Brazil and puts his losses at more than $500M. In June 2026, a court in Dubai barred Eyyub, Garayev, and 13 other individuals and companies from disposing of assets worth up to $704M, but the judge later questioned whether the case fell within the court’s jurisdiction. Soglaev has appealed and is seeking to have the dispute heard in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and the freeze remains in place pending the appeal. In Brazil, the DIA33 group is claiming R$138M from its former partner in the courts of São Paulo State, and in 2025 the 3rd Business Court of São Paulo found signs of unfair competition by Coral. Coral, for its part, failed to obtain an order from a Paraná State court freezing R$133M of its former partner’s funds. Soglaev also says that Eyyub told him in a phone call that he had discussed their conflict with a “Chechen field commander,” which Soglaev regards as a death threat. The defendants deny wrongdoing and say the partnership was never fully formalized.

A rare dispute between participants in the post-2022 trade in Russian oil that has brought its workings into open court: Dubai intermediaries, sanctioned traders, and the Brazilian diesel market. The freeze of up to $704M is a significant interim measure against traders under UK and EU sanctions and their associates, but its fate depends on the dispute over the Dubai court’s jurisdiction.