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In January, some 20,000 tons of wheat were unloaded in Egypt from a vessel rerouted from Syria. A Russian company called Pallada LLC exported the shipment.
Documents obtained by OCCRP show that the company had obtained small quantities of wheat from occupied regions of Ukraine in the two months leading up to the ship’s departure. It’s unclear if this wheat — considered “stolen grain” by Ukraine — made its way to Egypt. That’s because of gaps in some Russian export paperwork, and the ship repeatedly turning off its tracking system before arriving in Egypt.
Before the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed regime on December 8, Ukraine had repeatedly accused Syria of purchasing such shipments. (It also thanked Egypt in 2022 for turning away a vessel believed to be full of the nabbed grain.) But Assad was ousted while the ship in question was on its way to Syria. The vessel then loitered near Cyprus for nearly three weeks before anchoring in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria on December 30.
Both Pallada and the ship, known as Mikhail Nenashev, have previously come under scrutiny for exporting grain from occupied areas of Ukraine. Export quota documents issued by Russian-backed authorities also show that Pallada was granted permission to export thousands of tons of wheat, barley, and meslin from occupied regions in 2023.
Data from the Egyptian Maritime Transport and Logistics Sector indicate that 24,290 tons of wheat arrived on the shipment to Egypt. That’s about 3,000 tons less than Russian export records recorded before its departure in late November — but records otherwise indicate it is the same cargo.
Top officials in Ukraine say the missing tracking data and gaps in paperwork should have raised “red flags” and led to scrutiny by the Egyptian government.
While the Egyptian data omits the price of the wheat, global average wheat prices in December suggest it was worth about $6.7 million.
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