Russia seized one family's stake in its largest Baltic oil terminal — now it wants the rest
Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has sued Elena Vasilyeva, owner of 45% of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, a year after the state seized a rival family's 55% stake in the same facility. That earlier stake was handed to a company linked to Putin ally Arkady Rotenberg.
Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region against Elena Vasilyeva, who owns 45% of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT), according to the St. Petersburg outlet Fontanka.
According to Dmitry Oktysyuk, a representative of the Vasilyev family, the case relates to a 2022 transaction in which Sergei Vasilyev, one of the terminal's co-founders, transferred his shareholding rights from a Cypriot offshore company into his own name. Later that year, following a serious illness, Vasilyev passed control of the business to his wife, Elena Vasilyeva, who took over as chair of the terminal's board.
Fontanka reported that such transactions — moving rights to Russian assets from foreign nationals to Russian citizens — require approval from a government commission, and that without it a deal can be declared invalid.
The court has already frozen the Vasilyevs' shares and barred the couple from disposing of them. Oktysyuk said the family found out about the lawsuit only through the court's website; they will not be able to obtain the text of the claim until September 7, and a hearing has been set for September 11.
A pattern of seizures
The St. Petersburg Oil Terminal was established in 1996 by Dmitry Skigin, with the port also controlled at the time by businessman Ilya Traber, seen as close to Vladimir Putin from his early St. Petersburg years. PNT is now Russia's largest oil-products transshipment terminal in the Baltic region. In the late 1990s, Skigin's partner Sergei Vasilyev became a co-owner of PNT.
After Skigin's death, his shares passed to his children. In July 2025, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region sided with a Prosecutor General's Office lawsuit seeking to seize that 55% stake, citing the heirs' foreign citizenship. In July 2026, Russia's federal property agency, Rosimushchestvo, transferred the confiscated PNT shares to Roskhim, a company linked to the family of Arkady Rotenberg, a close friend of Putin.
