At a moment when Lebanon’s electricity crisis seemed like an open gateway for questionable deals, layers of hidden connections began to surface between networks supplying Russian oil under international sanctions—known collectively as the “shadow fleet”—and the fuel shipments that have been reaching Lebanon in recent years. With every new revelation, the picture has grown more intricate: a system of middlemen, forged certificates of origin, altered shipping routes, and tankers arriving in Lebanon labeled as Turkish or Egyptian oil, even as maritime tracking data showed they had departed from Russian ports before being “laundered” through Turkey.

The case, brought to light by investigative reporting alongside ongoing Lebanese judicial proceedings, revealed that Lebanon paid well above the capped global price for Russian oil after sanctions—despite the shipments ostensibly originating from countries not subject to any restrictions.

One vessel, the HAWK III, became a textbook example of how the scheme operated. Official paperwork listed Turkey as its point of origin. Navigation logs, however, indicated interceptions in the Black Sea and loading operations at a Russian port. The invoices submitted to the Lebanese state priced the shipment at several times the actual cost of Russian oil on the international market.

At the core of these operations stood a web of shell and intermediary companies based between Turkey and the UAE, registered under rotating names, using maritime routes that bypass traditional monitoring—mirroring the exact tactics used by the “shadow fleet” to dodge sanctions.

As the investigation expanded—especially after the Lebanese Army intercepted an oil tanker attempting to flee Beirut hours before a judicial seizure order was issued—questions intensified about how such deals were processed inside Lebanon’s Ministry of Energy. The forged documents and suspicious certificates of origin could not have passed through administrative or technical oversight without significant political cover.

Years of opacity in Lebanon’s energy governance, coupled with tight political control over the ministry, provided ample room for these networks to operate. The enormous price gap—Russian oil often sells at roughly 60% less than the global benchmark—has fueled suspicions of kickbacks and political patronage at the highest levels.

Ministers affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement held the energy portfolio during critical periods when these deals were executed. This opened the door to political interpretations linking lax oversight to the ease with which discounted oil entered the Lebanese market before being resold at inflated prices under fabricated origins.

As the investigations progressed, it became clear that what surfaced publicly was merely the tip of the corruption iceberg. Evidence points to more than thirty ships allegedly following the same pattern—each carrying forged documents and tailor-made certificates of origin. The financial scope is staggering: systematic fraud that turned Lebanon into a transit point for untraceable fuel and inflated invoices that extracted over half a billion dollars from public funds. Judicial records show not administrative errors but a coordinated network operating openly, moving ships in and out of the country as if Lebanon were nothing more than a façade—its institutions reduced to rubber stamps available to the highest bidder.

Parallel reporting suggested that some companies involved were linked to networks Russia has relied on since the start of sanctions to disguise the origin of its oil. The pattern—departures from Russian ports, stopovers in Turkey for paperwork alteration, then re-export to the Middle East—is identical to the global modus operandi of the shadow fleet. And it hasn’t been limited to fuel; these same networks have been implicated in moving sanctioned Russian grain and grain stolen from Ukrainian territories occupied since 2022.

Crucially, the same mechanism appeared in shipments headed for Lebanon, indicating that the country had become part of a logistical corridor used by intermediaries to navigate around international monitoring systems—generating enormous profits for traders at the expense of a nation in economic freefall.

Lebanon’s judiciary stepped in as suspicions mounted, issuing orders to seize ships and freeze assets, charging firms involved in transport operations, and uncovering forged certificates and fraudulent conduct tied directly to public financial losses. Yet despite these steps, the full picture remains elusive. The intermediaries operate through foreign-registered companies; documents move across multiple ports; and tanker routes can shift within hours—making the attribution of direct responsibility a complex challenge.

What remains undeniable is that Lebanon’s energy sector—during a period in which the ministry was dominated by the political circle surrounding the “General’s son-in-law”—became a fertile arena for massive deals that contributed to losses exceeding $40 billion.

The absence of transparency in public tenders, years of political monopoly over the ministry, and the spiraling deficits at Electricité du Liban collectively opened the gates to international networks operating at the margins of the law and exploiting a system mired in dysfunction.

As the scandal deepened, it became increasingly evident that the ministers who oversaw this sector—and the political bloc that controlled it for years—had shifted from the role of public administrators to that of prime suspects. Their aggressive interventions in fuel contracts and their welcoming of dubious international networks were not mere administrative lapses. They were deliberate political gambles with public money, feeding into a global market under sanctions. Buying cheap Russian oil and selling it to the Lebanese state at inflated prices was not business—it was organized profiteering built on forged paperwork and the systematic concealment of the cargo’s real origin.

More troubling still, according to international investigations, these transactions helped recycle funds used to support Russia’s war machine—fueling the bombardment of Ukrainian cities and the killing of civilians—while the world was imposing sanctions to halt Moscow’s assault. Lebanon’s Ministry of Energy, meanwhile, functioned as a convenient backdoor for deals that bolstered Russia’s wartime economy, while Lebanese citizens struggled to keep the lights on.

Adding another layer, journalistic reports revealed that one of the vessels targeted by Ukrainian forces in the Black Sea—part of Kyiv’s campaign against the Russian fleet and its affiliated transport networks—was en route to Beirut after completing a “paper-cleaning” stop in a Turkish port. The ship was carrying a fuel shipment slated to have its origin altered on paper before being struck—a detail that underscores how deeply Lebanon had become entwined with routes used by Russia to evade sanctions.

Today, with mounting evidence linking several shipments to opaque Russian maritime routes and forged certificates, the central question looms large: Was Lebanon merely the victim of a global smuggling scheme, or did the absence of oversight inside the Ministry of Energy make the country an easy station for trafficked, sanctioned Russian oil?

The reality is far from simple. But one conclusion is unmistakable: the collapse of trust in state institutions has turned one of Lebanon’s most vital sectors into a playground for deals struck in the shadows. As long as the energy file remains monopolized by a single political force and shielded from transparency, every incoming shipment carries the potential for yet another scandal.