Commodity trader Trafigura has sold a multibillion-dollar stake in a giant Russian oil project to an obscure Hong Kong company that was set up just nine days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Trafigura said in a statement on Wednesday that its 10 percent stake in Vostok Oil, a gargantuan Arctic development backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been sold to “an independent Hong Kong-registered trading company”, Nord Axis Limited.

Corporate filings in Hong Kong show Nord Axis was incorporated on February 15, the week before Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border.

The sale shines a spotlight on a new group of traders in Russian oil that has emerged since the invasion. Nord Axis has lifted 20,000 barrels a day of Russian oil since the beginning of March, forming part of a wider group of at least 24 traders new to Russian business that have collectively taken about 450,000 b/d in the second quarter, according to Petro-Logistics, a Swiss-based cargo-tracking group.

While dealing in Russian oil is not directly prohibited by western sanctions, many of the largest traders such as Trafigura have curtailed the business in response to public and political pressure.

It is unclear who is behind Nord Axis or what funds it had to raise to acquire the Vostok stake. Terms of the deal between the two privately held companies were not disclosed, but Trafigura said Nord Axis had taken on the $5.8bn of ‘non-recourse bank debt” it had borrowed from Russian lenders to finance its original $7-3bn purchase of the asset last year.

When Trafigura, whose annual turnover is $230bn, signed the deal last year, it represented its largest-ever investment and came with a promise of access to millions of barrels of Russian oil it could market internationally.

Trafigura had to inject $1.5bn of its own cash into the project and borrowed $5.8bn from the Credit Bank of Moscow, a fast-growing lender with ties to state-backed oil company Rosneft and its chief executive Igor Sechin — one of Putin’s closest allies. Trafigura last month wrote off its equity investment.

Corporate filings in Hong Kong and Singapore identify individuals involved in Nord Axis, including some that share names with a Singapore-based former