Greek shipping companies have earned more than 3.8 billion dollars carrying Russian oil over the past three years, even as Athens and its European Union partners backed sanctions meant to drain the Kremlin's war chest. The figure comes from a Financial Times analysis published Tuesday.
Three firms did most of it. Dynacom Tankers earned more than 915 million dollars, close to a quarter of the total. The Onassis Group's Olympic Shipping made at least 404 million, while Stealth Maritime and Polembros Shipping cleared more than 200 million between them. By the newspaper's count, eight of the 20 companies that earned the most from Russian oil since June 2023 are Greek.
The trade is not illegal. Under the G7 price cap, tankers may carry Russian crude as long as it sells below a set ceiling. The numbers still sit awkwardly beside Greece's place inside a bloc that has spent three years tightening sanctions on Moscow's energy income. In 2023 Ukraine went so far as to brand several Greek tanker operators, Dynacom among them, "international sponsors of war," before dropping them from the list under pressure from the Greek government.
The Financial Times built its estimate from freight-pricing data by Argus Media and tanker-tracking data from Kpler and the International Maritime Organization, covering 389 million barrels shipped along the main Russian routes since June 2023. A further 153 million barrels were left out for lack of pricing data, which means the real total is likely higher.
Washington and Brussels are now moving to tighten the screws again, steps that could reach the Greek fleet directly. For an industry that has quietly become one of the biggest carriers of the very oil the West is trying to squeeze, the distance between the sanctions on paper and the tonnage on the water has rarely looked wider.