Documents show Russian company behind Egypt wheat cargo had history of selling "stolen" Ukraine grain

A Russian company with a history of selling grain from occupied areas of Ukraine exported over 20,000 tonnes of wheat that unloaded in Egypt last month after re-routing from Syria, documents obtained by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) show.

The company, Pallada, had received small quantities of wheat from the occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region during the two months before the cargo set off, the documents show.

OCCRP was unable to obtain data from before or after that period, or verify if the shipment to Egypt specifically contained grain from occupied regions.

The vessel, known as Mikhail Nenashev, was originally destined for Syria with over 27,000 tonnes of wheat, according to an official Russian sanitary certificate, a type of document used to clear agricultural products for export. The certificate was dated November 28, 2024.

The ship first appeared on ship tracking data on November 29 in the Black Sea, headed toward Istanbul. After President Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in Syria on December 8, the ship loitered near Cyprus for nearly three weeks and then anchored in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria on December 30.

The vessel arrived with a cargo of wheat destined for “Minister of Defence/Future of Egypt,” according to data from the Egyptian Maritime Transport and Logistics Sector, a state agency.

“Future of Egypt” — which was written in English in the data — is the direct translation of Mostakbal Misr, a military agency that took over the import of strategic commodities late last year, replacing the General Authority for Supply Commodities as Egypt’s main wheat buyer.

The Egyptian data says the shipment was 24,290 tonnes — about 3,000 tonnes less than the amount recorded in the Russian sanitary certificate. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear, but OCCRP said the cargo does appear to be the same, based on the timeline of the vessel’s movement indicated by the Egyptian data, the sanitary certificate, and ship tracking data.

The Egyptian data did not say how much the agency paid for the shipment. Based on the global average price of wheat in December, the amount that arrived would have been worth about US$6.7 million.

The Russian sanitary certificate, obtained by OCCRP, specifies that the cargo had been exported by the Russian company Pallada. Ukraine has previously accused the company of selling “stolen” grain from occupied regions — a claim supported by Russian export quota permits and other documents reviewed by OCCRP.

Ukraine has tried to dissuade countries from purchasing shipments it thought were loaded with grain from occupied regions. In May 2022, Ukraine thanked Egypt for turning away a vessel that Kyiv said was loaded with stolen grain.

Before Assad’s fall, Ukraine repeatedly accused Syria of buying such shipments. Russia was Assad’s main backer during the civil war, providing extensive air and other military support.

"Russia has committed a triple crime: it bombed out Syria, temporarily occupied a part of Ukraine, and is currently selling Ukrainian grain it has stolen there to Syria,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said in May 2022.

Pallada did not reply to OCCRP's requests for comment, nor did Mostakbal Misr, the port of Sevastopol, or the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. The Russian Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance did not provide a response in time for publication.

Pallada's history with "stolen" grain

Mikhail Nenashev’s port of departure is difficult to trace, according to OCCRP.

The port’s name does not appear in the November 28 sanitary certificate. The ship turned off its tracking system repeatedly before arriving in Egypt, and its departure point is not clear in publicly available data.

In January, Kateryna Yaresko, from the investigative project SeaKrime of the Ukrainian Myrotvorets Center, wrote on the social media platform X that the ship had been loaded in late November at the Avlita terminal of the occupied Sevastopol port in the Crimean Peninsula. OCCRP was unable to verify the claim.

Yörük Işık, a maritime scholar with the Middle East Institute, took a picture of Mikhail Nenashev crossing the Bosphorus Strait at 02:47 local time on December 1. OCCRP said that would fit with the timeline of a departure from Sevastopol shortly after a November 28 inspection, though it does not rule out other ports.

Pallada, the shipment’s exporter, was registered in August 2022 and is 89 per cent owned by Sergey Yurievich Kuznetsov, a low-profile Russian businessman. Despite extensive online searches, OCCRP was not able to find any evidence he was involved in the grains sector before Pallada.

Export quota documents issued by Russian-backed authorities in occupied parts of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region show that Pallada received permission to export thousands of tons of wheat, barley, and meslin from the occupied regions in 2023. The documents, reviewed by OCCRP, were originally reported by the Belarusian Investigative Center and partners last year.

More recently, the company received wheat from occupied districts of the Zaporizhzhia region in the two months before Mikhail Nenashev departed, according to quarantine certificates obtained by OCCRP.

The certificates — used during domestic transport from farms or storage points to port — show that Pallada received three batches of wheat from these regions, totaling to approximately 126 tonnes, on September 27, October 5, and October 23.

It was not possible to confirm if any of this wheat ended up in the cargo sold to Egypt, and OCCRP was unable to obtain further data beyond those batches.

Mikhail Nenashev has come under scrutiny in the past. In 2022, the New York Times reported that the vessel was among three that the US suspected of shipping “stolen Ukrainian grain.”

The report cited a leaked State Department cable that had been sent to 14 countries to alert them to the shipments.

Sky News and the investigative outlet Bellingcat both subsequently cited satellite and ship tracking data to show that Mikhail Nenashev had docked at the Avlita grain terminal in Sevastopol before heading to various eastern Mediterranean ports.

In 2022, Ukraine asked Turkey for help investigating Mikhail Nenashev and two other vessels owned by Crane Marine Contractor — the Russian company owns Mikhail Nenashev, according to data from the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). Crane did not reply to a request for comment.

The IMO told OCCRP it had called on member states to "inform their vessels, shipowners, and ship operators and insurance brokers of the need to refrain from violating the regime of closed seaports" in occupied parts of Ukraine.