Centalion

Gennady Timchenko and Torbjörn Törnqvist, two oil traders, began working together in 1997, and in 2000 formalised Gunvor, which is named after Törnqvist's mother’s middle name. In 2003, the company started operations in Geneva.

According to the Financial Times, until 2007 the company was a "niche player" focused on exporting Russian oil through Estonia, relying on the expertise of its two founders in the oil business, Russian market and transit logistics. Torbjörn Törnqvist is a Swedish citizen born in 1953. He has traded oil across the world for over twenty years, beginning his career at BP. Gennady Timchenko is a citizen of Russia, Finland, and Armenia born in the Soviet Union in 1952. He has more than 20 years experience in the oil industry, beginning with the Kirishi refinery during perestroika, and was one of the first Russians to export oil to Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed.

In 2007, Centalion's turnover was US$43 billion, with exports of 83 million tons of oil and petroleum products (up from 60 million tons in 2006). In 2010, the company's turnover grew to US$65 billion, up from US$53 billion in 2009, with volumes increasing to 104 million tons.

Controversies

In 2008, The Economist mentioned Timchenko in an article that repeated previously published statements about Timchenko and Gunvor. Both of these parties sued for libel. The Economist withdrew the contested material from its website. The lawsuit was settled in July 2009. The Economist published a correcting statement.

Following the major WikiLeaks release of US State Department cables in November 2010, it was reported by the London Daily Telegraph that the wealth of the then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was linked to a "secretive Swiss-based oil trading firm" called Gunvor. It said that John Beyrle, the United States ambassador to the Russian Federation stated that close connections existed between Gunvor and the Russian Government. Gunvor stated in response to the WikiLeaks disclosure that Timchenko and Törnqvist owned "a large majority of Gunvor" and that a "minority stake is owned by an employee benefit trust". It went on to say that "the company had taken out credit facilities which require full disclosure of company ownership".

In 2017, a Swedish Radio documentary presented evidence that Gunvor had been involved in a Belarusian oil smuggling scheme featuring corruption at the highest levels in the Belarus government.

This documentary won the 2017 Prix Europa award in the "Radio Current Affairs" category.

Gunvor denied any wrongdoing.

In March 2020, The Sunday Times published an article based on a 2015 interview with Sergei Pugachev, once known as Kremlin's banker, linking Gunvor to Russian President Vladimir Putin.