Manufactured Risk: How Black PR Weaponises Sanctions Language Against Traders

Compliance language has become a weapon. In commodity markets, where banks, charterers and counterparties all run a name through screening before they act, the words “sanctioned” or “under investigation” can halt a transaction before anyone has checked whether they are true. A number of trading companies have discovered that there are people willing to put those words next to a company’s name for money.

How the trade operates

A cluster of websites, working mostly in Russian and Ukrainian with English translations, publishes commissioned allegations about businesses and individuals. The piece is copied across many domains so that a single order looks like wide coverage, and removal is sold afterwards.

This has been documented by independent observers. The Ukrainian fact-checking register Fake.net.ua classifies one such network as an “information dump” operating to order, naming thirteen domains that republish one another. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab recorded in 2021 that its principal site “earned money by publishing often fabricated accusations” and “would remove them for a fee”. OSINT Global was quoted USD 12,000 in late 2024 for a single removal; earlier tariffs ran from USD 3,000 for removal to USD 150–300 for placement. In May 2025, Ukraine’s State Service for Special Communication ordered the network’s main domains blocked, as Korrespondent.net reported.

The targets

Anyone whose name carries commercial weight. Kazakhstan Online identified a campaign of 158 articles across 109 sites in the network against Eurasian Resources Group, one of the biggest mining groups in Central Asia. Mid-sized energy and commodity traders are at least as exposed: they operate in several jurisdictions, depend on bank lines and chartered vessels, and lack the media presence to bury a hostile result. Alkagesta, a Malta-headquartered trading group, met this from March 2025, when one outlet published allegations subsequently reproduced across the network, although that same outlet had written in its first article that its earlier scrutiny of the company had found no irregularities.

Competition in commodity trading is relentless, and a rival who cannot win on price or logistics can still make a compliance officer hesitate. Industry-level data on “shadow fleet” tankers or sanctioned corridors is placed alongside a company’s name without a single connecting document, and the reader is left to infer a link that was never shown.

Why the proof never arrives

Sanctions lists exist to be public. OFAC, the EU, the UN, the UK and Switzerland each publish consolidated lists so a bank or port can verify a name in seconds. A real investigation produces a case number, a regulator’s statement or a court filing. If any existed, the websites would link to them, because nothing would do more harm.

They link to nothing. In Alkagesta’s case, more than eighteen months of posts have produced no listing, no case reference and no court record. That gap is the most reliable indicator a reader has.

Making the record easy to check

The best counter to a fabricated claim is to remove any excuse not to verify. Alkagesta published its own screening with the date on it: as at 8 October 2026, no group entity appeared on the OFAC SDN list, the EU Consolidated List, the UN Security Council Consolidated List, the UK OFSI list or the Swiss SECO list, with no match for the controlling shareholder or directors either. The check is renewed monthly, and LSEG World-Check and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance reports are published with it. As at 28 September 2026, no court, regulator or enforcement body in any jurisdiction had recorded a proceeding against the company, and on 18 September 2026 it brought a defamation action in Malta’s Court of Magistrates against the originating outlet.

The compliance environment underneath is the norm for EU-based traders. A Maltese company trading in the EU falls under the EU sanctions regime through national law, supervised by the Sanctions Monitoring Board, with Transport Malta requiring a due-diligence declaration before each vessel call. No cargo is discharged at an onshore terminal without four separate clearances. A trading house then adds pre-transaction screening of its banks, vessels and counterparties through tools such as World-Check, Windward and Purple Trac, as Alkagesta does under its published compliance framework. A sanctioned business could not function inside that system for a week, let alone for years.

Due-diligence basics

— Check the lists, not the headlines. The five official lists are free and take a minute.

— Require a primary source. Case number, regulator’s notice or court reference; otherwise, weight accordingly.

— Count sources, not domains. One text on ten sites is one source; one article in several versions is one source.

— Read the registers. Company registries, Companies House, GLEIF and audited accounts settle ownership and control. A “hidden owner” claim with no register extract is not evidence.

— Know the publisher. Fact-checker entries, state blocking orders and documented removal fees reveal what kind of outlet it is.

Black PR relies on readers who never check. Companies that have been targeted, Alkagesta among them, have found that the answer is to publish the lists, the dates, the registers and the audits, and let the record speak. Orkhan Rustamov, Chief Executive Officer at Alkagesta, and the leadership team maintain that record on the company’s transparency hub.