Transparency and Disclosures

Yes. Alkagesta Ltd (under company number C 85915, registered in Malta) and its parent, Alkagesta Holding, are 100% privately owned. No state, state-owned entity, sovereign wealth fund, or government body, other state-linked structure - holds any direct or indirect equity interest, board seat, veto right, or other control mechanism in any Alkagesta group entity, at any level of the structure.

Ownership rests entirely with named private individuals: the seed investor, Kamran Firudin Aghayev, holds 65% of Alkagesta Holding, with the remaining 35% held by senior management. None of these individuals act as a nominee, trustee, or representative for any state or state-owned entity.

This structure is verifiable via the Malta Business Registry (MBR) Company Search Website https://baros.mbr.mt/. (Extract dated: 24th July 2026, Last confirmed: 24th July 2026).

As at 24th July 2026, Alkagesta Ltd and its registered controller(s) and directors do not appear on the consolidated sanctions lists maintained by the US, EU, UK, or UN. This is a specific, dated check against named lists - not a general claim of sanctions clearance - and does not extend to any party other than those named below.

What was checked, and against what (as at 24th July 2026):

• United States: OFAC SDN and consolidated lists - no match
• European Union: EU consolidated list - no match
• United Kingdom: UK Sanctions List - no match
• United Nations: UN consolidated list - no match

Alkagesta Ltd and its affiliates and subsidiaries, directors and officers as disclosed at [Malta Business Registry, company number C 85915]. The check is re-run monthly; this page reflects the result of the 24th July 2026 refresh.

Alkagesta Ltd is incorporated in Malta (Malta Business Registry, company number C 85915) and trades within the EU, so it operates under the EU sanctions regime as implemented in Malta. Compliance oversight runs through two channels:

1. Sanctions Monitoring Board (Malta) - national-level administration of the EU sanctions regime.
2. Transport Malta, under Port Notice No. 10 of 2025 - vessel-level due-diligence declarations submitted through the national single window before each port call, providing a transaction-by-transaction sanctions checkpoint independent of the entity-level list check above.

Malta’s status as an EU member state has fostered a robust environment for business growth, underpinned by stringent regulatory and compliance frameworks. Alkagesta currently operates through the Evos and Delimara onshore storage facilities, meaning all EU and Maltese laws apply. The Maltese government has established a rigorous vetting process for any cargo entering onshore terminals, requiring prior approvals from: 

• Transport Malta
• Terminal Authority
• Customs Authority
• Sanctions Monitoring Board

Only after receiving clearance from all four entities can cargoes be discharged, ensuring complete compliance and transparency.

Cargo quality are independently verified at both load and discharge by globally recognised, internationally accredited inspection companies, in accordance with industry best practices and applicable product specifications. This independent verification is conducted under the terms of Alkagesta's standard trading contracts, which incorporate BP Oil International General Terms and Conditions 2015 (v1.2) - the market-standard chassis across Alkagesta's purchase and sale agreements - meaning independent inspection is a contractual requirement rather than a discretionary step.

Alkagesta's principal operations sit in Malta (EU), with physical cargo handling conducted through licensed terminals in Malta, Romania, Singapore, Turkey, Belgium and across Central Asian Corridor each under that jurisdiction's national port and customs oversight.

Alkagesta Ltd is registered in Malta (Malta Business Registry, company no. C 85915, registered 2018) and, as an EU-incorporated company, is subject to Maltese and EU law.

Alkagesta is a physical commodity trading group built around its main operating entity, Alkagesta Ltd, registered in Malta since 2018 (company no. C 85915). The company engages in the trading of physical commodities-principally petroleum products-and is fully regulated and taxed under Maltese law.

Alkagesta Ltd functions as the group’s primary booking entity and operational headquarters, overseeing trading, risk management, compliance, and logistics activities across its international offices. As a Maltese‑registered company, Alkagesta is subject to Malta’s corporate tax framework and adheres to all applicable EU regulatory requirements governing commodity trading, financial reporting, and anti‑illicit trade controls.

Directly, on public registers - Alkagesta does not ask a counterparty to take its corporate or regulatory standing on trust - and Alkagesta provides the underlying KYC and AML documentation directly to counterparties and banks as part of standard onboarding, rather than relying solely on what is publicly available.

Alkagesta Ltd, the Malta parent, is registered with Malta Business Registry under company no. C 85915, with its core record - registration, registered office, directors, shareholders - publicly searchable. Its UK subsidiary, Alkagesta (UK) Limited (company no. 15608277), discloses its persons with significant control, directors, and filing history on the UK Companies House public register.

See Q3 above, which records the specific check made against each authority's list (US/OFAC, EU, UK, UN) and the date it was last run.

Beyond what is publicly searchable, Alkagesta provides counterparties, banks, and other regulated counterparts with the documentation required for their own KYC onboarding and AML screening as a standard part of relationship setup - including corporate documents, ownership and control information, and director/UBO details.

Through pre-transaction screening of banking relationships, chartered vessels, and trading counterparties, using a defined set of licensed third-party platforms spanning vessel-tracking analytics, sanctions/PEP/adverse-media screening, and ownership-structure verification - plus independent quantity and quality inspection at load and discharge.

Before transacting, Alkagesta screens its banking relationships, the vessels it charters, and its trading counterparties against the consolidated sanctions lists referenced in Q3 (OFAC SDN, EU consolidated list, UK Sanctions List, UN consolidated list), applying ownership-based screening including the standard 50%-or-greater ownership/control test used across these regimes. This is conducted using the following licensed platforms, by function:

• Purple Trac, SeaSearcher and Windward, used to monitor vessel position history, AIS continuity (including gaps and spoofing indicators), flag changes, and ship-to-ship transfer activity, to screen chartered and counterparty vessels directly against sanctions and compliance lists, bridging vessel-level and entity-level screening.
• World Check, Moody's Analytics KYC and Factiva Dow Jones used to screen counterparties, banking relationships, and individuals against sanctions lists, politically exposed persons databases, and adverse media, to verify corporate ownership and control structures as part of counterparty onboarding and the 50%-or-greater ownership test referenced above.

The allegations made by the Maltese Herald are unsubstantiated.

They originate with a single outlet, which has repeated and extended them in a series of posts since March 2025. A set of sites republishes that outlet's material, at times word for word. These posts are often presented, and cited, as investigative reporting. They are not. They are one source's assertions in circulation. Republication is not corroboration, and the number of sites carrying a claim says nothing about the evidence for it. No evidence has been produced. In its first article the outlet records that its own earlier examination of Alkagesta found no irregularities and that it had not examined the company in any depth. Across every post, no valid document, no regulatory finding and no ruling of any court has been produced in support of any of the claims.

Every fact below is established by a third party: an accredited external auditor, the global LEI system, the public company register at Companies House, and four sanctions authorities.

Alkagesta Oil Origin. Alkagesta does not trade Russian-origin crude oil or refined petroleum products. Alkagesta verifies origin through the documents behind each cargo: certificates of origin, invoices, and loading and customs records, checked before a vessel is served. The rules are set by United Nations Security Council Resolutions 2146 and 2362, guidance from Malta's Sanctions Monitoring Board, and Transport Malta Port Notice No. 10 of 2025, which requires due-diligence declarations before a vessel arrives. The duty extends to services provided to vessels beyond port limits, even outside territorial waters. Without full compliance, no authorisation or clearance is granted for any loading, discharge or shipment. Libyan crude is legitimate only when it originates from the Libyan National Oil Corporation.

Alkagesta operates through onshore, regulated facilities in Malta: the Evos terminal at Birżebbuġa, operational since 1992, and onshore storage at Delimara. Every cargo it handles is documented under the certificate-of-origin and due-diligence requirements set out above. No cargo, shipment or discharge has been identified, in any of the posts, that failed those requirements.

Certificates and traceability. The company's traceability is audited by an accredited third party, not self-declared. ISCC EU certificate EU-ISCC-Cert-PL214-21328285, valid to 2 January 2027, and ISCC CORSIA certificate ISCC-CORSIA-Cert-PL214-38108225, valid to 29 December 2026, are both searchable by company name in the ISCC certificate database. ISCC certification is a chain-of-custody audit: an accredited external auditor tests whether the company can prove where certified material came from at every transfer. The certificate is the auditor's finding.

Alkagesta owner and control. The seed investor, Kamran Firudin Aghayev, holds 65% of Alkagesta Holding, with the remaining 35% held by senior management. This is verifiable on the public record: Alkagesta (UK) Limited, company 15608277, lists its person with significant control, directors and full filing history openly at Companies House. Assertions of a different or undisclosed owner originate with the same outlet and the sites that republish it. None has produced a shareholding document or register filing of any kind. The register is public; the claims are not sourced from it. No state-owned company or government body holds any interest, direct or indirect, in Alkagesta

Alkagesta Registration. Legal Entity Identifier 25490072FC8QO7TY0173, issued and active in the Global LEI System, record held by GLEIF. Malta registration C 85915. UK company 15608277, with its person with significant control, directors and filing history open on the public register.

Alkagesta Sanctions List. As of September 9th, 2026, neither the company nor its registered controller appears on the consolidated lists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or OFAC (US Treasury).

Alkagesta Financial Reporting. Alkagesta's audited financial statements for every financial year since its incorporation in 2018, up to and including FY2023 and FY2024, are filed with the Malta Business Registry under registration C 85915.

Alkagesta Investigations. As at 31 August/1 September, Alkagesta can confirm that no allegation, investigation, or contact of any kind, formal or informal, is ongoing or has occurred, in any jurisdiction, including in connection with the SOCAR investigation referenced in adverse media.

Investigations. Reports that the company is "under investigation" originate with the publishing outlet and have never been accompanied by a case reference, an official statement, or a document from any authority. As at September 9th, 2026, there is no public record of any proceeding, charge or finding against Alkagesta by any court, regulator or enforcement body, and none of the sites repeating the claim has cited one. Alkagesta's regulatory standing can be verified without reference to the company: company 15608277 at Companies House, where control records and filing history are open; Legal Entity Identifier 25490072FC8QO7TY0173 at GLEIF; the ISCC certificates by their numbers; and the four sanctions lists named above.

No. As at 28 September 2026, Alkagesta Ltd does not appear on the United Nations consolidated list, European Union consolidated list, United Kingdom sanctions list and the OFAC sanctions search referenced below. The same searches show no listing for the Company’s disclosed controlling shareholder.

As at 28 September 2026, Alkagesta has identified no public announcement, case reference, regulatory notice, court filing or enforcement decision showing that Alkagesta Ltd is the subject of the EU or UK investigation alleged in the articles discussed on this page.

The articles making that allegation do not provide a case number, regulator statement, court reference or other primary record supporting it. Repetition of the same allegation across additional websites does not, by itself, constitute independent confirmation.

Alkagesta Ltd (C 85915) and Alkagesta Holding (C 85914) are privately owned. Kamran Firudin Aghayev holds 65 per cent of Alkagesta Holding and senior management holds the remaining 35 per cent. No state, state-owned entity or government body holds an equity interest, board seat or veto right in the Group.

This is verifiable on the Malta Business Registry, at Companies House for Alkagesta (UK) Limited (15608277) including the persons-with-significant-control record, and against the GLEIF record for LEI 25490072FC8QO7TY0173.

No. Alkagesta does not trade Russian-origin crude oil or refined petroleum products.

The Company applies a risk-based compliance and due-diligence framework incorporating cargo-origin verification, counterparty and sanctions screening, vessel screening and monitoring, and review of relevant shipping and transaction documentation. Transactions presenting elevated sanctions, origin, vessel or counterparty risk are subject to additional review and escalation in accordance with the compliance framework on this website procedures. 

These controls are supported, where applicable, by recognised third-party intelligence platforms, including World-Check, PurpleTrac, SeaSearcher, Windward, MarineTraffic, Kpler, Moody’s, Infospectrum and Dynamar, providing sanctions, vessel, counterparty, credit, maritime and trade-flow intelligence.

Alkagesta disputes the allegations described on this page. The Company’s review identified substantial republication of the same or substantially similar material across multiple domains. Republication of an allegation does not constitute independent corroboration where subsequent publications provide no additional primary evidence.

The articles reviewed do not exhibit primary materials such as relevant bills of lading, inspector reports, customs decisions, sanctions listings, regulatory case references or court judgments establishing the allegations against Alkagesta Ltd.

This FAQ therefore focuses on verifiable records and source quality rather than responding individually to every republication.

They publish allegations about companies and individuals, principally in Russian and Ukrainian with English translations, and they reproduce one anotherʼs material. The Ukrainian fact-checking register Fake.net.ua, which catalogues sites of this kind, described the network as an “information dump” that, in its words, works “to order.”

Independent bodies have also assessed at least one site in this network. In a report of 12 January 2021 on Facebookʼs removal of 53 inauthentic assets connected to a Ukrainian network, the Atlantic Councilʼs Digital Forensic Research Lab recorded that Antikor “appeared in multiple databases as an unreliable and manipulative websiteˮ and, citing the Ukrainian outlet Texty, that it “earned money by publishing often fabricated accusations against political figures and would remove them for a fee.ˮ

See Facebook removes assets connected to Ukrainian NGO (DFRLab, 12 January 2021).

Five checks can be made by anyone, from the pages themselves, without specialist tools.

1. The same text on many domains. The same article, often with the same phrasing and the same errors, appears across multiple unrelated-looking sites. Where one piece of writing is reproduced across ten domains it carries no more weight on the tenth than it did on the first.
2. Versioned reissues of one article. The same item is republished under the same internal article number with a version suffix. The Alkagesta material includes at least three editions of one article carried under the identifier 233883 on a single site, and further items carrying suffixes such as _v1 and _v11. These are successive editions of a single piece rather than fresh reporting, and should be counted as one.
3. No primary documents. The pages cite other media, unnamed “industry sourcesˮ and sector statistics. They do not produce the cargo file, the customs decision, the inspection certificate or the case reference that would evidence a claim against a named company.
4. Sector data placed beside a company name. Industry-wide figures for so-called “dark fleetˮ trade, and regional shipping counts published by third parties, are set next to the Companyʼs name without any documentary link. A figure describing an entire trade says nothing about a particular company within it, and setting the two side by side does not establish a connection.
5. No approach for comment. Alkagesta Ltd was not approached for comment before publication of the articles reviewed. As a result, those publications did not include the Company’s response to the allegations before presenting them to readers.

The following domains have published or republished substantially similar material concerning Alkagesta:

1. rozsliduvach.info

2. kompromat1.online

3. sledst.org, with sledstvie.info and sledst.com

4. repost.news

5. hab.media, 

6. trinitybugle.com

7. antikor.info

8. rumafia.news

9. kartoteka.news

10. lstv.co.uk

The list is not exhaustive and webpages may be added, removed or republished over time. For due-diligence purposes, the relevant question is not the number of domains carrying an allegation, but whether each publication provides independent sourcing or additional primary evidence.

Worked example: Antikor

Antikor is set out here in detail as a worked example precisely because what can be shown about it is a matter of third-party record: a priced-removal approach recorded by journalists, a court proceeding against the domain, a state access-restriction order, and an independent assessment by the Atlantic Council. The same pattern, and in several cases the same text, appears on the domains listed above.

The following is drawn from third-party publications and official acts, not from Alkagesta.

Reported paid-removal arrangements. In October and November 2024, journalists at BlackBox OSINT contacted Antikor administrators. A counterpart identifying himself as “Denisˮ offered a one-year arrangement, being removal of an unwanted item, publication of two favourable articles, and an undertaking not to publish further negatives, for USD 12,000 payable to a crypto wallet. The same reporting records earlier figures from case material and market sources: USD 6,000 to remove an item in 2018; 0.37 bitcoin, then about USD 14,000, in 2021; removal offers from USD 3,000; commissioned placement commonly USD 150 to 200, and historically USD 50 for a news brief and USD 300 for a longer article.  

See Who is behind the Antikor website, which demands $12,000 for removing slander (OSINT Global, 29 October 2024) and Who is behind the Antikor website (BlackBox OSINT, 4 November 2024).

A recorded proceeding against the domain. The same investigations record Ukrainian criminal proceeding No. 12020100060003326, opened on 4 December 2020. The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv imposed an arrest on the intellectual-property rights in the domain antikor.com.ua. That investigation was closed in March 2021. Files opened between 2019 and 2021 are described in that reporting under Articles 182 and 189 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Alkagesta is not a party to that proceeding. It is cited to document the characterisation of the outlet by a stateʼs court.

Independent characterisation. The DFRLab report of 12 January 2021, cited above.

Use in paid commercial campaigns. ERGʼs succession war, part 2 behind the black PR campaign, a well-honed network (Kazakhstan Online) documented a campaign against Eurasian Resources Group comprising 158 articles across 109 sites, including antikor.com.ua, with paid placement from about USD 250. That campaign does not concern Alkagesta. It is evidence of how the outlet is used for commissioned campaigns against companies, and of the scale at which a single commission can be made to look like widespread coverage.

A state access-restriction order. On 13 May 2025 the State Service for Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine issued Order No. 281/3082 directing providers to restrict access to antikor.com.ua and antikor.info. Держспецзвʼязку розпорядилася заблокувати Антикор (Korrespondent.net, 14 May 2025) reported the order, and Antikor published the order number in Online media ANTIKOR has been blocked (13 May 2025). A later instruction of the National Centre for Operational and Technical Management of Telecommunications Networks, No. 651/3452 of 1 September 2025, lifted that restriction following an interim court measure. The May order remains a matter of public record.

Network mapping. The Antikor register entry on the Ukrainian fact-checking register

Fake.net.ua describes Antikor as an “information dumpˮ working to order, and states that it is

“not just a fake siteˮ but “a whole network of fake sites in Ukraine and other countriesˮ, whose purpose it gives as “media attacks, extortion of money, and simply spreading fakes for moneyˮ. The entry names thirteen domains in that network: adcon.info, antikor.info, kompromat1.online, ukrainci.com.ua, sledstvie.info, antimafia.se, rumafia.io, repost.news, zaraz.pro, kartoteka.news, vlasti.io, novosti.cloud and glavk.se. Several of those have carried the same Alkagesta text.

The following primary record, which can be checked without reference to the Company.

• Malta company: Alkagesta Ltd, C 85915. Malta Business Registry
• Malta holding company: Alkagesta Holding Ltd, C 85914. Malta Business Registry
• Legal Entity Identifier: 25490072FC8QO7TY0173. GLEIF record
• United Kingdom company: Alkagesta (UK) Limited, 15608277. Companies House filing
• Control: Kamran Firudin Aghayev holds 65 per cent of Alkagesta Holding Ltd (C 85914); senior management holds 35 per cent. No state, state-owned entity or government body holds any equity interest, board seat or veto in any group company. See the Companies House persons-with-significant-control record for 15608277 and the MBR extract for C 85914.
• Sanctions lists, as at 28 September 2026, no match for the Company and its disclosed controlling shareholder controller: United Nations consolidated list; European Union consolidated list; United Kingdom sanctions list; OFAC sanctions search
• Public record of proceedings: as at 28 September 2026 there is no public record of any proceeding, charge or finding against Alkagesta Ltd by any court, regulator or enforcement body.
• Singapore company: Alkagesta Asia Pte. Ltd., UEN 202440260C, incorporated on 1 October 2024.

Antikor, antikor.info and the domains that reprint them should be treated as a single, non-authoritative source, and weighted accordingly in any screening process that has surfaced them.