Christopher Eppinger, a 30-year-old German oil trader, made over $250 million trading Russian oil during the turmoil following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Through his firm CE Energy, he profited from legal loopholes in Western sanctions while claiming full compliance with price caps. Now living lavishly between Cannes and Dubai, Eppinger is one of the few traders to speak openly about profiting from Russian oil, describing himself as ambitious, unapologetic, and determined to keep expanding his fortune. The FT writes:
One day in June, a tall, clean-cut 30-year-old, wearing shorts and Loro Piana loafers, ambled into La Guérite, one of the most exclusive restaurants in one of the most exclusive towns in France. Tables here are so coveted that even the wealthiest of its clientele book weeks in advance and have to wait in line under the sweltering sun to make the short crossing to the tiny Mediterranean island off the coast of Cannes where it is located. But the young man strolled straight to the front of the queue, on to the first available boat and onwards to his usual table at the restaurant.
Christopher Eppinger has been a regular since soon after he bought a €7mn villa in the hills on the mainland. […]
Eppinger is able to afford such largesse because, between 2022 and 2025, he traded some $2bn worth of oil, making personal profits of more than $250mn. He is by no means the only trader to have made a fortune from the upheaval in the energy markets wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent global sanctions. But Eppinger, who was 27 when the war began, is almost certainly the youngest. […]
That risk perhaps explains why Eppinger is the only trader to have agreed to talk publicly about that period. Most of those who remained involved with Russian oil, whether or not they sought to comply with the west’s rules, have tried to say as little as possible about it. […]
“I’m not ashamed of anything that I’ve been doing,” he said. “Maybe I will have to answer the question of ‘Has everything been below the cap?’, but it was below the cap, so . . . I’m not scared to tell the people that the source of my business was Russian oil.” He was optimistic that the banks would see value in the company’s balance sheet and provide the credit lines needed to take his company to the “next level”. “I’m good at relationships. Can I trade better than a trader at Vitol? No. Can I leverage my contacts better? Yes.” […]
After we landed in Switzerland, a waiting car whisked us to lunch with a potential new chief financial officer. I left Eppinger and Liebig to have their bank meetings. Afterwards, Eppinger seemed happy. Several of the discussions had gone well, he thought. He’d told the bankers he had travelled to Switzerland with the FT, he said. They replied that they planned to read the resulting article closely.
Read more here.
