Russian court seizes majority stake in St. Petersburg Oil Terminal from family of founder, who co-owned facility with early Putin associate

A court in Russia’s Leningrad region has approved a request from the Prosecutor General’s Office to transfer 55 percent of shares in the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal to the state, according to reports from Interfax, RBC, and Kommersant.

The lawsuit was filed in January. Its other defendants included three offshore companies registered in Cyprus — Almont Holdings, Novomor, and Tujunga Enterprises — which are owned by the children of Dmitry Skigin, the late former owner of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal. The claim was based on the fact that the beneficiaries are foreign nationals, who are barred from owning strategically important companies in Russia without prior approval from a special government commission and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS).

The beneficiaries of the Cyprus-based firms are siblings Mikhail and Yevgeny Skigin, who hold German citizenship, and their sister Polina Skigina, a French citizen. Mikhail and Yevgeny each own 17.875 percent of PNT shares through Tujunga Enterprises, while Polina holds 14.285 percent. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, they acquired the shares through three transactions in 2016 and 2020.

RBC reports that the Skigin siblings’ legal team argued the shares were inherited in 2003, while the law requiring prior government clearance only came into force in 2008. The defense plans to appeal the court’s ruling.

Opened in 1996, the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT) is now the largest Russian facility for handling petroleum products in the Baltic region. It was founded by Dmitry Skigin, who co-owned the terminal with businessman Ilya Traber. The independent Russian outlet TV Rain has described Traber as “the only living crime boss known whom Vladimir Putin has admitted having connections to.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Novaya Gazeta that Skigin and Traber “once worked on a project to build the oil terminal, and as part of that effort repeatedly reached out to the leadership of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office,” where Putin worked at the time.

Traber and Skigin left Russia in the late 1990s, after which Skigin’s business partner, Dmitry Vasiliev, became a co-owner of the terminal. Following a serious illness, Vasiliev transferred control of the business to his wife, Elena Vasilieva, in 2022. Soon after, a conflict broke out between her and Skigin’s children, now being litigated in court.