Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has charged shipping financier John Michael Ormerod with alleged money laundering and breaches of Russia sanctions, the Financial Times reported Thursday. 

NCA officials believe that Ormerod took part in a £200,000 transfer on May 20 of last year in violation of UK sanctions, the FT said. Ormerod, who was separately added to a UK sanctions list on the same day, transferred an additional £100,000 that he “knew or suspected was benefit from criminal conduct” in breach of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, agency officials alleged.

British authorities imposed sanctions against Ormerod in 2025 after the FT reported that he had helped acquire at least 25 secondhand oil tankers later used by Russian oil producer Lukoil to transport billions of dollars of oil. According to the newspaper’s October 2024 investigation, Ormerod acquired the vessels between December 2022 and August 2023 for more than $700 million in total.

Each tanker was purchased through a separate Marshall Islands special purpose company incorporated by Ormerod, while Lukoil’s Dubai-based Eiger Shipping DMCC provided funding by paying in advance to charter the ships. Neither Lukoil’s parent company nor Eiger was subject to UK sanctions at the time, the FT said, though Britain later said when sanctioning Ormerod that he had “procured ships for Russia’s shadow fleet.”

According to the newspaper, shipping data showed the vessels later transported more than 120 million barrels of oil from Russia. 

Ormerod, now retired, is a longtime figure in London shipping finance, the FT reported. His lawyers told the newspaper in 2024 that he had been approached by Eiger in late 2022 to buy ships for its “general trade” and that he carried out “extensive due diligence” to ensure the purchases would not breach sanctions. The UK lifted sanctions on Ormerod in March after he issued a public statement condemning Russia’s invasion and urging others to avoid business that could financially support Moscow. 

Britain has designated more than 3,000 individuals, entities and ships under its Russia sanctions regime since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but has rarely brought criminal cases against alleged violators. By the end of last year, only two sanctioned individuals, including Ormerod, held sole British nationality, according to the report. 

Read more at the Financial Times