The European Union imposed sanctions on Nils Trost, a Dutch oil trader residing in Switzerland, for violating the price ceiling on oil exports. Trost is reportedly involved in violating the $60 per barrel price ceiling imposed by Western countries. Swiss authorities are also investigating Trost’s company Paramount Energy & Commodities SA.
According to a statement from the EU, Trost’s Geneva-based company transferred its oil trading activities in Russia to its Dubai-based subsidiary Paramount Energy & Commodities DMCC in June 2022. The EU claims that this subsidiary regularly trades Russian crude oil at prices exceeding the set limit of $60 per barrel.
The $ 60 ceiling price for Russian crude oil, introduced in December 2022, was part of the West’s efforts to reduce Moscow’s oil revenue while protecting global supplies. Under the sanctions, trade involving Western insurers and financiers must comply with this price cap. But Paramount’s Dubai subsidiary continued to trade East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) grade oil, which typically trades at prices above the ceiling, unlike Russia’s Urals crude.
Trost denied that its UAE subsidiary violated sanctions, arguing that it was legally independent and not subject to EU sanctions. Speaking to the Financial Times, Trost claimed that his lawyers had assured him that the activities of subsidiaries in the UAE were exempt from EU restrictions as long as they were not connected to the European parent company. Trost also attributed the sanctions to what he described as the ‘machinations’ of his former business partner Gaurav Kumar Srivastava.
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