Judo diplomacy

In 2023 the businessman, together with his sister Anel Alsenova, who is joint director of the group, was nominated by the Swiss chapter of the auditing firm Ernst & Young for the Entrepreneur of the Year award, in the “Services and Commerce” category. Switzerland Global Enterprise – an association that promotes Swiss exports and Switzerland as a business location – also published a long interview in which Alsenov said why he moved to Switzerland: a favourable environment. He welcomed, among other things, his excellent collaboration with the economic development department of the Canton of Vaud. Since February 2024, he also has a Wikipedia page which is very rare in the opaque world of commodity traders.

When he is not extolling the virtues of his business, the grain trader devotes himself to his other passion: Judo. In 2022, he set up the first professional judo club in Kazakhstan, JENYS, before becoming, in late 2023, the personal adviser of Marius Vizer, president of the International Judo Federation (IJF) and a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. A business partnership also links Harvest Group SA to this sports organisation, which has long had very close ties to Russia. Within the IJF, Alsenov now has the grandiose title of commissioner for commercial partnerships and promotion, a position created with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in mind. This explains why he was seen shaking hands with French president Emmanuel Macron this summer, when a gold medal had just been won by Kazakhstan. Just after that, he was awarded another medal by Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who, as we reported in a previous investigation, is also a great fan of Switzerland.

A hidden shareholder

It was the judoka’s background and the profile of his group, encompassing half a dozen companies all based in Switzerland and some linked to Russian businesses (see infographic), which aroused our curiosity. This is how we discovered that Niels Troost, a Dutch businessman who has spent his career trading Russian oil from Geneva and who has been the subject of several Public Eye investigations, was invested in Harvest Commodities SA, the Geneva-based office of Harvest Group SA.

A copy of the shareholders’ register that we have seen shows that as of 30th July 2022 Almaz Alsenov controlled only 51% of the capital of Harvest Commodities SA, a company that trades in “agricultural products, raw materials and other products, including sunflower oil” according to the cantonal registry.   

The remaining shares were held as follows: 26% by a company registered in Tannay in the Canton of Vaud; 4% by a Geneva-based consultant specialised in administering commodity trading companies active in the countries of the former USSR; and 19% by a holding company called Ezi-Diaroc Holding SA. The person behind this entity, located in Carouge in the same building as a factory manufacturing metal-cutting tools, is Niels Troost. According to our information, in May 2023, the holding took over the shares held by the Tannay-based company, thereby giving him control of at least 45% of Harvest Commodities SA, almost the same size of stake held by Almaz Alsenov. Niels Troost confirmed to Public Eye, that between January 2021 and September 2023, he was a shareholder of Harvest Commodities SA, adding that “the purpose of the company was to exclusively purchase agricultural product from Ukraine through direct sourcing from farmers and exporters”. Niels Troost explained further that even after he ceased being a shareholder in Harvest Commodities SA, he wanted to support the Geneva business as an “outside financier”.

Sanctions in the UK

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Public Eye disclosed that Paramount Energy & Commodities SA, the discreet oil trading company registered in Geneva in 2017, was one of the top buyers of Russian crude oil at the port of Kozmino, near Vladivostok. We reported that at the time, it was sourcing from Concept Oil and Demex, two twin companies linked to former executives of Transneft, the Russian state-owned giant that owns all the pipelines in Russia.

Paramount Energy & Commodities SA was caught in the spotlight when sanctions on the trade with Russian oil were declared in December 2022 by the G7, the European Union and Switzerland. According to reports by the Financial Times  and the NGO Gobal Witness, Paramount Energy & Commodities SA (now in liquidation had transferred its lucrative activities to its Dubai subsidiary, Paramount Energy & Commodities DMCC, in the Summer of 2022. Trading in Russian oil was able to continue until August 2023 from the United Arab Emirates, a country that has not adopted sanctions against Russia.

Niels Troost and the two Paramount entities are currently subject to sanctions in the UK, suspected of having circumvented the sanctions by buying Russian oil at a price in excess of USD 60 per barrel, the price cap set by the West. In Switzerland, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), the body responsible for enforcing the sanctions, took up the case in April 2023, as disclosed by the Financial Times. According to our information, the case has been referred to the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, which has launched a preliminary investigation.

In March 2023, Paramount SA and Paramount DMCC explained to the Financial Times that the two entities were operated and managed “totally independently” and that Troost had “no management or direct shareholding interest in the company in Dubai”. However, in February 2022, both companies signed a Nominee Agreement, which seems to say the opposite. The document, of which we have a copy, states that Paramount’s Dubai branch is a subsidiary of the Geneva-based company, and that the nominee director in Dubai– at the time a Swiss citizen – “will act upon the instructions of the Shareholder [Editor’s note: Paramount in Geneva] and sign such documents and make such payments as the Shareholder may request from time to time in relation to all business activities of the Company [Paramount in Dubai].”

Niels Troost stated to Public Eye that he was “not aware of any investigation by any authority relating to a breach or circumvention of sanctions by Paramount SA or Paramount DMCC” and that he has “no reason to believe any such investigation is under way”.

Saviour of Ukraine?

In light of his exposure of his dealings in Russian oil trade, did Niels Troost exclusively turn to grain trade, using the joint venture with Almaz Alsenov?

In the wake of the Russian invasion, Harvest Commodities SA gave great publicity to its activities in support of Ukraine. In August 2022, the Geneva-based company praised itself in a press release translated into ten languages for successfully chartering two ships (Riva Wind and Arizona) from the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk, as part of a partnership with the Indonesian Arsari Group. These shipments, containing a total of 105,000 tonnes of corn destined for Turkey, were among the first commercial shipments dispatched from Ukraine since the full-scale invasion on 24th February 2022 under the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI). A successful media campaign for the “international merchant and distributor” which was picked up by the Financial Times, including a photo of Riva Wind.

In July 2023, Moscow decided to close this maritime corridor, forcing Kyiv to seek alternative solutions. In January 2024, according to Eureporter, the Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy welcomed the gradual resumption of grain exports via a temporary corridor through the Black Sea, made possible “thanks to the support of our Armed Forces and the trust of international partners.”. Immediately after, the online service presented Niels Troost, an “investor in Harvest Commodities SA”, as one of these partners. “We had full confidence and trust in these projects and immediately agreed to be among the first ones to work together with our Ukrainian partners” said Troost. It was also reported that the company wanted to build grain warehouses at the Ukrainian port of Izmail on the Danube.

“Our investments in local infrastructure and logistics not only create jobs and bring foreign currency to the region, but also ensure that grain from Ukraine will continue to play an important role in providing food to consumers from third world countries, including Africa,” Troost remarked enthusiastically. The Ukrainian news site also said that, since 2021, Harvest Commodities SA had ”exported more than 350,000 tons of Ukrainian grain to Turkey, Egypt, China, Italy, Georgia, and Croatia”. According to Niels Troost, between May 2021 and January 2024, over 709 000 tonnes of Ukrainian grain had been exported.

Since then, there has not been another word about the Geneva-based company’s activities in Ukraine. When asked about local investments, a Ukrainian source told us that “Harvest Commodities was present at the time at the port of Izmail, but nothing was implemented. There was a lot of talk, and a lot of promises were made, but the project simply never materialised. We wondered what could have happened”. Troost stated to Public Eye, that he “had the intention of financially supporting the company in the project [Editor’s note.: in Izmail] as an outside financier” but that this was cut short when he was sanctioned in the UK in February 2024.

The fortress on Rue de Villereuse

Niels Troost’s support for Ukraine may come as a surprise. Also because before this, the Dutch businessman had almost exclusively focused his business on Russia, enjoying high-level connections in the oil sector.

This trader, who is still a Swiss resident, owns a house in the Conches area of Geneva. His other villa in Thônex, another district of the city, was sold for CHF 4.4 million in March 2023, according to the land register. Troost could thus rely on the same Geneva network as the one he used for Russian oil trade. Paramount Energy & Commodities SA and Harvest Commodities SA are registered at the same address, Rue de Villereuse, the stronghold of Maurice T. This former banker is a recognized specialist in consulting commodity trading companies associated with the countries of the former USSR (with Russia being the main one). It was him who registered and administered both companies – the first one up to June 2024 and the second one until March 2024. In July 2022, he even held, in a personal capacity, 4% of Harvest Commodities SA’s capital, as indicated in the shareholder registry mentioned earlier. From July 2018 to June 2024, he was also a board member of Harvest Group SA in Morges; and from April 2019 to September 2024, he held the same position in Agrofood Holding SA, alongside former judoka Almaz Alsenov. Maurice T. declined to comment when approached by Public Eye.

Harvest Commodities SA has certainly had an intriguing past. With Alsenov as chairman and Maurice T. as board member, the company was called Sun Oil SA from its creation in April 2018 until March 2020. Until March 2019, it had two Russian board members: Aleksandr B. and Elena A., both of whom have made their career in trading Russian hydrocarbons. Aleksandr B., now a naturalised Swiss citizen, was Deputy Director at Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant, from 2012 to 2013. From 2016 to 2018, he headed Areti Energy SA, the Geneva subsidiary of the group of the same name, which specialises in trading gas. His LinkedIn profile makes no mention of his time at Sun Oil SA/Harvest Commodities SA.

As for Elena A., now an Israeli citizen living in Vienna, she held senior positions within Rosneft, as head of the department in charge of trading crude oil and refined products. In February 2022, just a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the pair registered an oil trading company called Astra Energy Group SA in Geneva, whose subsidiary in Dubai is now also involved in trading grain.

Since the start of his career, Almaz Alsenov has been involved with Russian businesses. In addition to the opaque Harvest Group, he has been chairman and director of AR Ascent Resources SA since 2016, registered in Morges at the same address as Harvest Group SA. Until April 2019, this commodity trading company included Rashid Karsakov, the founder of one of the largest Russian grain traders based the Volgograd region among its board members.

High-risk trade with Russia

While Harvest Commodities SA has created a lot of publicity around its activities in Ukraine, business with Russia did not dry up completely. In its press release issued in August 2022 concerning its involvement in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the Geneva-based trading house also said that it had chartered two ships to ”carrying grain owned by Harvest Commodities from Novorossiysk in Russia. (…) the M/V Shark with 25,000 tonnes of grain and the M/V Bronco 10,000 tonnes of grain”. In a brochure for its customers (“Corporate Profile Harvest Commodities SA”), a copy of which we have seen, Harvest Commodities SA presented itself as “one of the biggest buyers of Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products”. The company also lists seven port terminals for grain where it does business, four of which in Russia.

The research desk The Counter of the Dutch NGO SOMO granted us access to trade data from GlobalWits, a database which collates information obtained from customs agencies. Harvest Commodities does not appear, neither here nor in a second trade database we consulted. The Harvest Group SA and its entity in the United Arab Emirates, however, figure as exporters. 

According to GlobalWits, the Harvest Group bought over 60 cargoes of Russian grain between May 2022 and January 2024. Its two main suppliers are the giant Demetra Trading and Grain Gates, companies which are closely related, according to Russian media. Until July 2023, Demetra’s shareholders included the largely state-owned Russian bank VTB, which has been subject to sanctions in the US, the EU and Switzerland since 2022. Until August 2023, billionaire Alexander Vinokurov (the son-in-law of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov), sanctioned himself, was also a shareholder of Demetra. Grain Gates, run by a former senior executive of Demetra Trading, emerged on the scene following the Russian invasion. It is now the number one company on the Russian grain export market. 

In July and August 2023, the subsidiary of Harvest Group SA – ME Harvest Trading FZE based in the United Arab Emirates – also exported close to 30 cargoes from Russia. This amounts to a total of over 90 shipments, or about 3 million tonnes of grain, according to our estimates. These volumes are higher than those purchased in Kazakhstan, which is the second-largest supplier for Harvest Group SA. 

Another entity that caught our attention is Harvest Trading SPC. From January to July 2024, this Oman-listed company purchased over 40 shipments of Russian corn and barley. It began to operate just as Harvest Group SA ceased exporting from Russia for the group. Harvest Trading SPC also sourced almost exclusively from Grain Gates, one of the two suppliers of the Morges-based group. These details make us believe that it could be an entity close to Harvest Group SA.  

Since the beginning of Moscow’s war against Ukraine, the trade in Russian grain has been a risky activity, as we have recounted in a previous investigation. While trade in Russian agricultural commodities is not targeted by sanctions, it is well documented that systematic plundering of grain is taking place in the territories occupied by the Russian armed forces, particularly in the Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Most of the plundered goods end up on international markets as Russian commodities due to various tactics used to hide their Ukrainian origin. For example, grain is transported to Russia and then mixed with Russian grain in Black Sea ports. Ship-to-ship transfers are also used.  

The largest global trading houses of agricultural commodities have been forced to stop buying from Russia, because Moscow has increasingly taken control over its exports und has made it increasingly difficult for international traders to obtain the necessary documentation for their exports. Moreover, the Russian regime threatened to nationalise foreign subsidiaries should the international companies not be willing to sell off their Russian branches (often far below market value). Consequently, the international traders have been replaced by smaller traders with a less transparent profile.

Harvest’s mystery trips to Iran

The consulted export databases do not always show the destination the Russian goods purchased by the Harvest Group SA go to. Based on the information available, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates seem the top destinations, followed by several countries in Africa and the Middle East, excluding Iran.

Among the fleet of ships used by the Harvest Group SA, there are two vessels which it owns, one of which is the Harvest Legacy. Through ship tracking services we could establish that this bulk carrier, which sails under the Panamanian flag, made regular trips between Russia and Iran between January and June 2024. On three occasions, it has called at the grain terminal in the port of Bandar Imam Khomeini, an Iranian city located in the Persian Gulf. It had obtained Russian grain from the Taman terminal, located in the Kerch Strait, which connects annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland.

As we highlighted in a previous investigation, Moscow uses ports in the Kerch Strait not only for its regular grain exports, but also for exporting plundered Ukrainian grain, which is why it is considered a high-risk location.

On the Harvest Group SA website, no mention of any business with Iran can be found. However, we were able to identify a company called Harvest Pars Middle East which was registered in Tehran in 2016. A document that we were able to view shows that among the beneficial owners a certain “Olmaz Alsnof” is listed – a name that seems like a literal translation of Almaz Alsenov.

Oil trade hidden in plain sight

The group is shrouded in other mysteries. Until last summer, for example, the Harvest Group SA website also listed among its activities “deliveries [of crude oil and oil products] to and from Africa, Europe and Central Asia”. Using the Russian search engine Yandex, you can find traces that mention this oil trade. But when you click on the link, the page is unavailable.

But thanks to the cache function, we were able to retrieve a copy dated 6th August 2024. It shows a photo of an oil tanker with the following text: “Crude oil and oil products play a vital role in the global economy. They are fundamental to transportation, energy production, generating electricity and powering industrial processes. The Company’s focus is deliveries to and from Africa, Europe and Central Asia, by concluding partnerships with a select group of direct suppliers and end-users. The Company operates in strict compliance with international sanctions related to oil and oil products.”

All this raises questions: By investing in Harvest Commodities SA alongside Almaz Alsenov, did Niels Troost really turn the page on oil trading? In the commercial data we have consulted, the Geneva-based Harvest Commodities SA does not appear as a buyer of oil or refined products, neither in Russia nor in any other country. The same is true for Harvest Group SA or other affiliated entities.

Niels Troost claims that according to the best of his knowledge, “Harvest Commodities SA never traded any oil”.

Another mystery is the perseverance with which Harvest Group SA continues to streamline its website. In late October, the address of the offices in Switzerland, Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates, Serbia and Poland could still be found under “Contacts”. Now, only Kazakhstan and Serbia are left. A date has also been removed from the group's history: 2008 – the year when it was set up in Dubai.

A curious liquidation against the backdrop of an absurd story

Last but not least, the Geneva commercial register indicates that Harvest Commodities SA was put into liquidation on 14th October. This major clean-up could be linked to Niels Troost's persistent problems. In addition to his concerns about sanctions and the launch of a preliminary investigation by the Office of the Attorney General in Switzerland, the Dutch trader is struggling with a public battle with one of his former business partners. In May 2024, he filed a complaint in California against the law firm of his former partner, as revealed by Reuters. In the summer of 2022, this Indian-born businessman, living in the United States, invested 50,000 US-Dollars and became a 50% shareholder in Paramount Energy & Commodities SA. He also gained control of 26% of Harvest Commodities SA’s capital (via the company registered in Tannay mentioned above). His shareholdings were cancelled in May 2023. Troost’s current explanation for this is that his short-lived running mate had posed as an CIA agent – one of the famous NOCs (non-official cover) – promising him protection from US authorities, while he was actually a conman. This story, which sounds like a bad TV series, was the subject of a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal and in December 2024 also featured in an article by Gotham City, an Swiss online service specialized in economic crimes.

According to our information, the ex-business partner, who has a very different take on this story, has filed several civil complaints in Switzerland to recover his shares in the companies, while also suing Troost in criminal proceedings for slander and defamation. His lawyers are also said to have sent a large file containing internal documents from Paramount Energy & Commodities in Geneva and Dubai to several authorities, amongst others OFAC, the U.S. Treasury agency responsible for enforcing sanctions, the Dutch anti-money laundering office, and to Seco and as well as Swiss criminal prosecution agencies. They include the ledgers of both trading companies, which detail all payments made between July 2022 and May 2023. This wealth of information might shed some light on the ties that Troost’s companies had with various entities in Russia at the time and may reveal additional secrets. 

*Addendum after publication

On 16 December 2024, the European Union sanctioned Niels Troost and several associated entities: Paramount Energy & Commodities SA (PECSA), Paramount Energy & Commodities DMCC, Livna Shipping, BAP LTD and Cesco Holding SA. The reasons given are: «In June 2022, Paramount DMCC took over and continued without interruption PECSA's oil business vis-a-vis Russia, underlining close and direct operational and strategic control of PECSA over its subsidiary, Paramount DMCC. Paramount DMCC repeatedly traded Russian crude oil above the price cap after its introduction. Moreover, Niels Troost is affiliated with Livna Shipping Ltd, which has been trading crude oil above the oil price cap after its introduction.» In the list of the European Union, «associated individuals» are also listed, such as Maurice T., the Geneva-based consultant and administrator of Niels Troost.