Two Russian businessmen have been arrested in Europe and accused of running a sprawling smuggling operation carrying Venezuelan oil on dark fleets to a company controlled by a sanctioned oligarch and one of China’s largest energy conglomerates.
Dubai-based Yury Orekhov, 42, and Artem Uss, 40, son of a Russian regional governor, set up a scheme to export oil from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA and the operation sought to disguise the loads in official documents as green beans or paddy rice, according to US prosecutors.
