From judo to commodity trading: Kazakhstan adviser to the IMF head Almaz Alsenov trades Russian resources through liquidated Swiss firms

Almaz Alsenov, advisor to International Judo Federation head Marius Vizer, is involved in the trade of Russian oil and grain. Vizer himself, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, served as IJF’s honorary president until February 28, 2022.

Alsenov, a Kazakh citizen and former professional judoka, has been Vizer’s advisor since late 2023. He earned degrees in corporate management and geophysical engineering in the early 2000s before relocating to Switzerland.

In 2015, Alsenov and his sister, Anel Alsenova, founded Harvest Group along with several affiliated companies, including Harvest Commodities SA, which officially focused on agricultural trade. Prior to the war, the company actively traded with Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries.

Harvest Group has had a close partnership with Vizer and the International Judo Federation since December 2023, as reported on the Federation’s website. Alsenov also took the position of Federation Commissioner for Partnerships and Promotion. Meanwhile, according to the Swiss research organization Public Eye, about 45% of his Harvest Commodities SA was controlled through two other legal entities by a businessman named Nils Troost. He is a major oil trader who made his fortune trading Russian oil before the war and was unable to abandon it after 2022.

Troost is on the sanctions lists of the EU, Switzerland, and the UK, and his Swiss company, Paramount Energy & Commodities, through which he conducted most of his operations, has been in liquidation since March 2024. It does have a sister company in the UAE, PARAMOUNT ENERGY & COMMODITIES DMCC, but it is also subject to sanctions.

As for Harvest Commodities SA, which belonged to Almaz Alsenov and Nils Troost and was registered at the same address as Paramount Energy & Commodities, it was previously known as Sun Oil SA. Its management until 2009 included highly experienced top managers: Alexander Berezikov, a former employee of Rostec subsidiary RT-Khimkompozit and former head of Rosneft’s procurement division, as well as his Rosneft colleague Elena Alekseyeva. After leaving Alsenov’s company, they founded their own company, ASTRA ENERGY GROUP SA, which is based in Switzerland and Dubai and, of course, deals with Russian oil trading. It is known that, at least until March 2023, its main supplier was the Russian company OIL TECHNOLOGIES LLC (part of Mikhail Gutseriev’s Safmar Group, which owns the Afipsky Oil Refinery), but Swiss journalists are somehow convinced that Dubai-based Astra also trades grain.

In 2022, Harvest Commodities SA publicly supported Ukraine and even chartered two vessels that transported corn to Turkey from the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk as part of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Harvest Commodities SA reported transporting Ukrainian grain until 2024, when Troost announced that it had been sanctioned and suspended the initiative, deeming it obviously pointless. However, it continued to purchase grain from Russia.

The advisor to the head of the International Judo Federation also owns other companies in Switzerland that have long-standing and strong ties to Russia. For example, AR Ascent Resources SA, a stake in which, according to the Swiss registry, belonged until 2019 to Rashid Korsakov from the Volgograd region. Last year, he ranked third among the region’s wealthiest businessmen, with a net worth of 5.85 billion rubles. His largest asset is the Grain Zavolzhya Group of Companies.

Interestingly, Harvest Group SA’s seagoing vessels sail between Russia and Iran—Public Eye specialists tracked the route of the bulk carrier Harvest Legacy in 2024. It turns out that Alsenov also has a business in Iran: the company Harvest Pars Middle East was registered in Tehran in 2016. The exact cargo his vessels were carrying is unknown.

The Swiss company Harvest Commodities SA is currently in liquidation. It appears the Kazakh judoka has decided to refocus this part of his business on the UAE and Iran.