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The UK has imposed sanctions on an English accountant for his alleged involvement in the procurement of ships for Russia’s shadow fleet in a rare move against a British national.
John Michael Ormerod was added to UK sanctions lists on Tuesday alongside two Russian ship captains, 18 shadow fleet vessels and 46 financial institutions that the British government said had helped Russian efforts to evade western restrictions.
The UK added that it was working with other western governments to lower a $60 per barrel price cap placed on Russian crude exports in December 2022.
The measures are the latest effort by the UK government to disrupt the activities of the shadow fleet built by Moscow to circumvent restrictions placed on its ability to export oil following is full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The UK has sanctioned more than 100 shadow fleet vessels since the start of the war but this is the first time the government has targeted a British person for their alleged involvement in the acquisition of such ships.
Western governments have rarely sanctioned their own citizens. Under the measures announced on Tuesday Ormerod’s UK bank accounts and other assets have been frozen, meaning it will be complicated for him to pay for goods and services, particularly if he resides in the UK. He has also been disqualified from serving as a director.
Ormerod did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Financial Times reported in October that Ormerod had acquired at least 25 second-hand oil tankers between December 2022 and August 2023 on behalf of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, at a total cost of more than $700mn.
Each ship was bought by a different special purpose company incorporated by Ormerod in the Marshall Islands, but Lukoil’s Dubai-based Eiger Shipping DMCC provided the funds by paying in advance to charter the vessels.
Shipping tracking data showed that the vessels went on to transport more than 120mn barrels of oil from Russia after they were originally acquired by Ormerod.
Ormerod’s lawyers told the FT at the time that he had been approached by Eiger in late 2022 “to buy ships for their general trade” and that he undertook “extensive due diligence” to establish that the proposed purchases would not violate any sanctions.
Documents reviewed by the FT showed that Ormerod later transferred his ownership of at least 14 of the vessels to a Pakistani national. Ormerod’s lawyers said their client had ended his involvement with all 25 of the ships by September of 2023 before any of the individual vessels were sanctioned.
An Eton-educated chartered accountant, Ormerod, 74, is a veteran financier in London’s close-knit shipping industry. From 1975, he held a series of shipping jobs at Hambros Bank, Bankers Trust and Den Norske Bank before setting up his own financial advisory company, Ormerod Allen & Co, in 1990.
The FT’s investigation last year identified that the ships acquired by Ormerod were then managed by Dubai-based companies linked to a second British national, a Karachi-born ship recycling magnate named Tahir Lakhani who had known Ormerod for almost 40 years.
Lakhani has not been sanctioned. In a statement to the FT at the time, Lakhani said he “never had any involvement or facilitated the breach of any sanctions”.
