The trusteeship serves as a formal screen, blocking the transfer of profits to Moscow by freezing accounts; operationally, however, the Rosnieft Deutschland subsidiaries continue their activity on German territory. There are well-founded grounds to suspect that the staffing and operational situation within these entities has not changed significantly, and it was precisely they who in the past negotiated supplies of the raw material referred to as “dyed oil.”
At the center of this diplomatic and legal dispute stands the Polish deputy minister of energy, Wojciech Wrochna, whose professional qualifications and private-sector background are an important context for the negotiations under way. As a lawyer with experience at one of the largest law firms, serving major entities with German capital such as Axel Springer or the Mutares Group fund, Wrochna possesses deep knowledge of German and international civil law.
The Polish ministry was said to have presented the German side with four variants for delivering oil through Gdańsk, constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that the end recipient remains an entity linked to Rosnieft. What raises controversy is that the proposed solutions may fall within the definition of conduct described in the German penal code as deceit (so-called Arglist), which entails acting as a so-called front (a straw entity) in commercial dealings.
Between Warsaw and Berlin, a peculiar shifting of responsibility is taking place over the use of mechanisms that circumvent strict legal rules and sanctions. The Polish side, by presenting variants for the concealed transport of the raw material, takes on the role of an active participant in a process that raises doubts of a legal and ethical nature in the context of the ongoing energy war with Russia.
