TheChek News Flow

240,000-word prospectus lays out explosive growth alongside steep losses and daunting risk factors

Anthropic has fired the starting gun on one of the largest-ever initial public offerings, laying out explosive growth, heavy losses and a daunting array of risks as it kick-starts the biggest test so far of investor appetite for the AI boom.

The developer of Claude published its highly anticipated prospectus on Monday, detailing for the first time how it plans to sustain the exponential growth that propelled it from a $183bn valuation just over a year ago to $965bn in May.

The nearly 240,000-word prospectus showed ballooning revenues for the first half of 2026 of $16.3bn, up from $1.2bn over the same period the previous year.

Anthropic’s net loss in the first six months of this year was $81bn, with more than $72bn related to changes in the value of convertible notes as the company’s valuation increased. The bulk of the remaining losses came from a near-$9bn outlay on computing power and infrastructure.

The company’s operating loss was $693mn in the first half, down from $2.1bn in the same period of 2025.

Anthropic also revealed plans to aggressively increase its spending in the years to come, with commitments totalling close to $800bn over the coming decade.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are listed as joint leads in the IPO.

Anthropic’s founders said AI could “raise productivity across every sector of the economy”. But they also warned its models “have become better able to circumvent” systems designed to make sure they act as intended, and have been found to “manipulate or subvert” monitoring.

The company also pointed to risks stemming from a small number of high-value clients that account for a large slice of its revenues. While it noted that “no single customer” represented more than 10 per cent of its revenue in the nine months to September, Anthropic said that a quarter over the period came from its “top five” clients.

Anthropic said it would issue five different classes of shares, including Class T shares that would give its Long-Term Benefit Trust the right to appoint the majority of its board and Class F stock that would hand its seven founders 50.1 per cent of the voting power.

The San Francisco-based group is pressing ahead with the IPO at a critical juncture for the AI industry, as a furious debate rages over the safety of the technology and concerns grow over whether the increasingly debt-fuelled investment boom will pay off.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has fallen just over 7 per cent from a record high touched on October 6.

In a sign of the more testing backdrop, existing Anthropic investors expect the company to seek a valuation of between $1.5tn and $1.75tn. In August, several of Anthropic’s backers had said they expected the group to list at a valuation of $2tn or more.

In its prospectus, the company’s founders said the advice they had received from multiple partners was: “Never let your company be worth a dollar more than it is actually worth.”

The publication of the prospectus puts Anthropic on track to list after the US midterm elections on November 3, in which the benefits and costs of the AI boom have emerged as a central issue for voters, but before the Thanksgiving holiday on November 26.

Disclosing the prospectus is likely to ease the nerves of investors who feared that Anthropic’s window to go public was rapidly closing. It is rare for companies to list between the Thanksgiving holiday and the end of the year.

Anthropic has emerged from the shadow of arch-rival rival OpenAI this year, surpassing the creator of ChatGPT in revenues and traction with business customers.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of seven former OpenAI researchers and engineers after they became disillusioned with the approach to AI safety at Sam Altman’s AI lab.

Chief executive Dario Amodei and other AI leaders including Altman and Elon Musk have called for a slowdown in AI research to ensure the technology does not run catastrophically out of control.

Investment banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will fix Anthropic’s valuation following conversations with investors over the coming weeks.

Germany to tap Ukrainian tech with missile purchase

Bars strike system would be first offensive weapon developed in Ukraine to be purchased by the Bundeswehr

Germany is preparing to buy low-cost cruise missiles developed in Ukraine for its own armed forces, highlighting a shift in relations between Kyiv and its European allies as they increasingly seek to harness Ukrainian military technology.

German authorities are expected to finalise a deal in the coming weeks to buy an initial batch of the Bars missile for testing by the Bundeswehr, according to people familiar with the plans. 

Bars — Ukrainian for snow leopard — is a jet-powered weapon with a range of up to 1,000km and a payload of up to 105kg, depending on the variant. While Ukrainians sometimes refer to it as a “drone missile”, Germany calls it a low-cost cruise missile.

The initial purchase would allow the military to conduct technical trials early next year, potentially paving the way for a larger order of several hundred if the results are satisfactory.

The plan forms part of a multipronged effort by Germany to strengthen European deterrence against Moscow by bolstering its arsenal of long-range strike weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has named Bars as one of the weapons that is used to hit military bases and energy facilities inside Russia.

“It’s been the most mass-produced low-cost Ukrainian cruise missile,” said Fabian Hoffmann, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. “It’s the one that has flown the most. That means that the system is probably the most mature. The Ukrainians — and also the Germans — have the most data on how it performs.” 

In recent months, Bars has also been produced in Germany by a Ukrainian-German joint venture that is shrouded in secrecy. It was set up under a scheme called Build with Ukraine launched by Zelenskyy last year. The initial aim of the scheme was to produce weapons for Ukraine outside the country, helping to increase capacity and reduce the risk of Russian attacks as well as sharing expertise. A longer-term goal was to open up Nato markets to Ukrainian producers.

The first batch of German-made and German-funded Bars missiles was delivered to Ukraine in October.

The joint venture is now set to also produce for Germany, marking the first known purchase of an offensive weapon developed in Ukraine for the Bundeswehr’s own use. 

The plan forms part of a growing trend of Nato nations exploring Ukrainian technology for their own armies.

Denmark, Estonia and Latvia have signalled willingness to buy Ukrainian weapons. Denmark last month announced it was buying nine Dropla unmanned ground vehicles for testing.

The US Army last month awarded a $10mn contract to the American subsidiary of the Ukrainian company Skyeton to buy its Raybird reconnaissance drone. Germany, which has become the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine since President Donald Trump slashed American support, has also expressed interest in the system.

The plan to acquire Bars also reflects shifting mindsets among German defence officials after years of slow and bureaucratic procurement focused on big defence contractors. Berlin is increasingly open to buying weapons from start-ups and to testing their products in parallel with drawing up contracts in order to speed up acquisition.

Germany has been seeking to build up its stocks of long-range weapons as part of a €780bn rearmament drive over the next five years in response to Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and doubts about US security guarantees for Europe under Trump.

Berlin has signed an initial deal to buy high-end Tomahawk missiles, made by the US defence giant Raytheon, after Trump cancelled plans to deploy a US battalion to Germany equipped with the cruise missiles. But Tomahawks are expensive and also face production bottlenecks that mean they are unlikely to be delivered before the 2030s.

Officials are simultaneously pursuing cheaper, more mass-producible systems. Alongside Bars, Germany also plans to buy and test a small batch of Anthem cruise missiles made by the US-based start-up Covenant, which last week also announced a deal with Denmark.

Anthem costs roughly one-tenth of a Tomahawk’s $4mn-$6mn price tag. Bars is even cheaper, according to one person familiar with the details, but officials are open to buying both systems. A possible purchase of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile has been put on hold for the time being.

The head of the German land forces, Christian Freuding, spoke in coded terms this month about Bars and Anthem without naming them, saying that he expected such systems to “complement conventional high-end cruise missiles”.

He said: “These systems will allow us to engage targets at a depth of approximately 1,500km in large numbers, effectively saturating enemy air-defence systems.”

More expensive weapons, he added, would be reserved for “targets of strategic importance”.

Junk borrowers are stuck between a $2tn rock and a hard place

Huge supply means investors can afford to be picky, driving costs even higher for the most risky borrowers

It’s harvest time in the US, and not just for farmers. Companies, too, are reaping what they sowed after piling on debt during the post-Covid period of ultra-low interest rates. Trillions of dollars’ worth of bonds and loans are coming due for refinancing while interest rates are uncomfortably high.

Almost $2tn worth of speculative-grade debt and loans reach maturity in the next five years, according to Moody’s Ratings, of which $438bn is due by the end of 2028. That might seem like a long way away, but finance departments like to get this sort of thing sorted in plenty of time: by the middle of next year, even a late-2028 maturity will feel uncomfortably close.

The amount junk-rated companies owe within two years has risen 31 per cent compared with a year ago. Factor in a “pull-forward effect” — companies tend to refinance several tranches of debt at the same time when the earliest comes due — and near-term financing requirements grow further.

That’s awkward, because raising cash is pretty expensive right now. Rising inflation has driven up borrowing costs across the board. On top of that, the glut of debt issuance by tech giants certainly hasn’t helped.

The effective yield on publicly-issued junk debt has risen to 8.1 per cent from 6.5 per cent 12 months ago, according to Ice and BofA data. Huge supply means investors can afford to be picky, driving costs even higher for the most risky borrowers.

The travails of software maker group Planview give an example. It has more than $1.5bn in debt outstanding from a 2020 buyout, most of it due next year, but has spent more than six months trying to address the upcoming maturities. S&P Global Ratings last week downgraded the company deeper into junk territory, warning that “elevated leverage and soft financial performance could impede management’s efforts”.

But even high-quality companies could be in for a payment shock. There’s $1.6tn of investment-grade debt maturing by 2031, according to Moody’s. High-grade corporates tend to borrow for longer periods, so a higher proportion will be returning to the market for the first time since rates increased in 2022.

Companies that want to avoid a big increase in debt-servicing costs have a few options but none are very attractive. Many have already kicked the can down the road by extending existing arrangements to 2030 or 2031. Private credit can also offer more flexible terms, including options to pay-in-kind, but that increases their principal balance.

Waiting it out is another choice with even higher risks. Equity investors don’t appreciate companies sailing too close to the wind — as analysts at Citigroup highlight, even high-growth stocks have been falling if they have weak balance sheets. Perhaps an end to the Iran war is right around the corner and inflation worries will soon be a thing of the past. But for those taking such a gamble, the cost of being wrong could prove very high.

Ming Yang says Octopus joint venture and separate legal entities will convince customers that China cannot access data

One of China’s largest wind turbine manufacturers is seeking to address European national security concerns by placing data beyond the reach of Chinese law, after the UK blocked its turbines from British offshore wind farms. 

Ming Yang Smart Energy said it had established separate European legal entities, with independent governance and IT systems, to help convince governments and customers that its equipment cannot be used by Beijing to gather sensitive information or even disrupt electricity supplies. 

The Chinese company has followed legal advice from law firm DLA Piper to set up structures that will help insulate its European customers from the reach of China’s National Intelligence Law, which requires companies to co-operate with state intelligence agencies.

The move follows a statement by the UK government in March that it would not support the use of Ming Yang turbines in British offshore wind farms after conducting a national security assessment. The decision halted the Chinese company’s plans for a £1.5bn factory in Scotland that would have created up to 1,500 jobs. 

“The decision by the UK has been a push for us to work even harder on the topics that are on the table, the topics and allegations around cyber security, data security and all these accusations that everyone is aware of,” Philipp Pfefferle, Ming Yang’s head of public affairs, told the FT. “It’s important for us to convince the market there are answers,” he said. 

Ming Yang’s response includes forming a joint venture with Octopus Energy, providing turbines with the UK energy retailer providing software and control systems. “We’re exploring together how we can develop onshore turbines tailored for the UK market,” they said. 

Pfefferle did not comment on the joint venture’s timing or ownership structure, but said the goal was to establish a company “compliant with cyber security and data protection” regulations in Europe. 

EU governments are facing a dilemma as they try to balance the development of renewable energy with the security challenges of using Chinese equipment that could potentially be monitored or controlled remotely. Chinese wind turbines are typically 30 per cent to 40 per cent cheaper than western equivalents, according to the consultancy Rystad.

“Politically we have a very problematic situation where Chinese companies are bound by Chinese law and legislation to transfer data when called upon to do so,” said Michal Meidan, head of China Energy Research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 

While it is extremely unlikely that a Chinese company would take such a drastic step as to cut off a foreign country’s wind farm, “there’s the implicit threat of it”, she added. 

Ming Yang is trying to address those fears by separating its European operations from its Chinese parent. Pfefferle said: “We do not even as Ming Yang Europe have direct access to the wind turbines — it all goes via the developer. There is no access from China into our European organisation or into the data of the wind farms that people are afraid of.”

However, simply establishing separate businesses in Europe was “not the full solution”, Pfefferle said, adding that the European company had to be able to show “separate governance” from its Chinese parent.

Other Chinese groups have also taken similar steps to firewall their foreign operations away from Beijing. The most high-profile example is social media app TikTok, which formed UK and Irish legal entities with local responsibility for European users.

Stores boarded up their windows and shortened hours in anticipation of renewed looting, though most protests remained peaceful.

PARIS — Hunker down.

At a time when Christmas lights have started appearing in London, retailers in France and Italy boarded up their stores and curtailed opening hours on Saturday in preparation for another day of major protests, following the previous weekend’s demonstrations during which thousands of stores were damaged or looted.

Although Saturday’s marches in both countries were mostly peaceful, with isolated pockets of violence, the retail sector was left tallying the cost of lost business in the runup to the crucial holiday season — not to mention additional expenses linked to increased security measures. The lost business came on top of the costs of repairing the damages from the Oct. 17 marches.

“Compared with last Saturday, yesterday was a relief. But the precautions taken to protect shops and their staff are having an impact on business,” Judith Jiguet, executive director of the French Retail Federation, said in a statement Sunday.

“Shutting shop or erecting barricades cannot become the new normal. Retailers are essential to the life of our town centers: They must be able to rely on the public authorities to ensure their safety,” the executive added.

The federation, whose members include Galeries Lafayette Group, sporting goods retailer Decathlon and supermarket chains including Carrefour, E.Leclerc and Monoprix, said it remained “particularly vigilant” ahead of Nov. 5, when French unions have called for nationwide strikes.

Apple closed all three of its Paris stores on Saturday, but LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said it planned business as usual. On the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, roughly half the stores were protected by metal curtains or chipboard panels.

Printemps shuttered its store in Lille and shortened opening hours elsewhere, with the Nation branch in the east of Paris closing at 3 p.m., while the Boulevard Haussmann flagship shut 30 minutes early at 7:30 p.m., a spokeswoman said. Printemps stores in Marseille, Rouen, Nancy and Lyon also closed earlier than usual.

Galeries Lafayette kept all its locations running, but with limited opening hours in Rennes, Perpignan, Caen, Toulon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Nantes and Toulouse, a spokeswoman said.

Bring Back Order

Authorities were determined to avoid a repeat of the scenes of chaos that unfolded on Oct. 17, deploying 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, Sentinelle military personnel and elite commandos such as the RAID and GIGN, in addition to helicopters and armored vehicles.

Protests were banned in several cities, including Lyon and Marseille, while in Paris, the route of the main demonstration organized by the CGT union was changed at the last moment, with the police prefecture citing the need to protect retailers.

Those on the revised itinerary, which snaked from the south to the east of the French capital, were left scrambling to secure their storefronts.

Videos shot by local residents showed a flood of people stretching for miles, with the crowd estimated at 250,000 by the CGT and 110,000 by the Interior Ministry. Nationwide, the number of participants totaled 800,000 according to the union, or 410,000 according to police, slightly down from the previous week.

As the procession arrived on the Cours de Vincennes to the east of Paris in the late afternoon, a group of 500 violent “troublemakers” clashed with police, the Interior Ministry reported. They hurled projectiles including glass bottles, and police responded with tear gas and water cannons.

On Sunday morning, as joggers and families returned to the neighborhood, there were few visible signs of the clashes, except for scores of graffitied slogans on walls and tram shelters, including one that read “Macron Resign.”

Anger has mounted against President Emmanuel Macron’s administration over conditions in public schools and the soaring cost of living. Violent clashes were also recorded on Saturday in Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, Nice and Marseille.

Nationwide, “several” stores were damaged and 24 looted, compared with the 1,522 businesses affected the previous week, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Sunday. Police made 1,314 arrests, down from 2,628 the previous week.

Trade Minister Serge Papin estimated more than 3,000 stores were damaged or looted on Oct. 17. In Paris alone, local authorities had tallied 451 vandalized retailers, including 228 stores that were stripped bare, ranging from mom-and-pop groceries to luxury boutiques.

Controversial Advice

Papin sought to reassure the sector in the runup to the second weekend of demonstrations. “To the shopkeepers listening this morning, I want to say: you can be confident that order will be restored by the 24th,” he told financial news channel BFM Business on Wednesday.

Despite this, Paris police chief Patrice Faure advised store owners to take precautionary measures, including closing or shortening their working hours, barricading windows, removing any external objects that might be used as projectiles and, if possible, hiring private security.

The latter suggestion raised the ire of politicians including David Lisnard, president of the Association of French Mayors, who called it “an unacceptable admission of powerlessness” on the part of the authorities.

“Shopkeepers pay for the repairs and pay taxes so that the state can ensure their security — yet they are now expected to pay a third time for private security,” he wrote on X.

“Unable to fulfill this basic duty, the state is asking them to pay security companies. More costs, and therefore less income, at a difficult time. And the same injustice remains: The first victims will be those on the lowest incomes, who cannot afford this protection,” he added.

Faure responded by apologizing for a “clumsy” expression of support for retailers.

“Protecting shopkeepers and their premises is the state’s responsibility. We will not shirk our responsibilities. The preventive and deterrent measures recommended to shopkeepers are intended to complement this action, not replace it,” he stated on X.

In the wake of the Oct. 17 violence, Faure ordered the creation of a task force of 200 investigators charged with bringing vandals and looters to justice.

“They are pursuing every lead available to them, including social media, CCTV footage and forensic evidence. We shall not rest,” he said.

The police boss also ordered a nightly curfew in sensitive areas, including Place de la République and the Les Halles district, home to the Westfield Forum des Halles shopping center.

Milan on Alert

Tension built up also in Italy, specifically in Milan, where last weekend student-led protests over the rising cost of living, inflation and access to education were marred by widespread unrest in downtown as several hundred hooded individuals joined and took advantage of the demonstrations to loot shops and businesses.

On Friday, many retailers in town already started to barricade their stores as threats of new protests spread on social media throughout the week. These included stores mainly located in central high-traffic shopping areas including luxury’s Golden Triangle, the Duomo and San Babila Squares, thoroughfares Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Via Torino.

Despite Mayor Giuseppe Sala’s exhortation to stay open, some key businesses opted for an early closing on Saturday, including the Rinascente department store overlooking the Duomo cathedral that shut its doors at 3 p.m.

Others — spanning from Adidas to Levi’s — applied signs that they were open over the plywood panels protecting their windows to encourage shoppers to step in.

Law enforcement was heavily deployed to contain potential upheaval, but there were no new episodes of looting on Saturday, when about 10,000 protesters gathered in a peaceful demonstration in Milan.

Clashes with police were registered in other Italian cities, however, including Turin, Bologna and Rome, where roughly 50 students among the 4,000 protesters temporarily broke into the Colosseum. In Florence, law enforcement clashed with those trying to access the luxury shopping street Via Tornabuoni.

Marco Barbieri, general secretary of the Confcommercio Milano trade confederation, estimated that the damage to stores and commercial activities in Milan from the first weekend of clashes totaled more than 1 million euros, between structural damages and missed sales due to the early closing of businesses.

“It seems that reason has prevailed in Milan,” Barbieri said on Saturday.

“The senseless vandalism that wreaked havoc on the city center last weekend has not been repeated. As we have always said, demonstrating in a civil manner is a sacrosanct and inviolable right — one that stands in direct opposition to violence. We thank the public institutions, law enforcement, and the military for managing and keeping a difficult situation under control,” he added.

“We are especially grateful to the retailers who, despite the tensions, kept their businesses open — demonstrating the true meaning of courage, responsibility and trust. Let us never forget that, thanks to them, our cities are more vibrant, more attractive and safer,” Barbieri said.

The executive said half of the local fashion stores decided to close on Saturday, while restaurants and bars remained open. He reiterated that besides the economic implications, the city faces reputational damage.

Meanwhile, many independent retailers took to local media to voice their concerns, highlighting how they can’t afford continued early closings and lost income opportunities, especially with the holiday season around the corner.

A former Deutsche Bank executive got into business with the kingpins of Russia’s shadow fleet. It all went south.

In a rare legal fight, a former Russian energy industry insider has sued sanctioned oil traders who, according to Western officials, have become the most important middlemen enabling Moscow to sell its oil and fund its war in Ukraine.

Igor Soglayev alleges he teamed up in early 2024 with Moscow-backed traders known as the Coral network. The relationship soured after a tanker carrying tens of millions of dollars worth of diesel failed to deliver its cargo in Brazil. The two sides are now slugging it out in courts in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show. The U.A.E. court handling the main case hasn’t publicized the proceedings.

Soglayev, a former Deutsche Bank executive, notched a legal victory, despite receiving what he perceived as death threats over energy trades gone wrong. A U.A.E. judge issued a freezing order on more than $700 million of proceeds from the sale of Russian energy by Soglayev’s opponents.

“I realized I had been screwed,” Soglayev said in an interview. “I had been truly played.”

Chasing liquid gold

The size of the freezing order underscores the sums of money at stake in the market for Moscow’s sanctioned oil and the lengths that executives with ties to Russian energy will go to get a piece of it. Russia remains one of the world’s leading energy exporters along with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, selling more than $150 billion worth of crude and fuel each year.

To avoid Western sanctions, Russian oil exports have for the most part fallen under the control of a handful of middlemen from Azerbaijan and Russia. They are known in the industry and by Western officials as the Coral network, after a now-defunct trading firm where many of them used to work.

Led by little-known traders Etibar Eyyub and Tahir Garayev, Coral struck a secret deal with state-backed Rosneft to export much of Russia’s oil in the chaotic early months of the Ukraine war, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The network has since consolidated control of the market, moving tens of billions of dollars of oil annually on a fleet of tankers that form most of Russia’s shadow fleet.

The U.K. and European Union have sanctioned Eyyub, Garayev and several of their associates, plus dozens of trading and shipping firms they used to deflect attention from their activities. Eyyub said last year he considered the sanctions to be baseless, and that he had done nothing unlawful. A lawyer for Garayev has said the Azeri businessman hasn’t been involved in petroleum operations since 2022.

The Coral network sells crude that once headed to Europe, India and China. Russian diesel, meanwhile, flowed to Brazil, where the fuel powers haulage trucks. The Latin American country devours the fuel to power haulage trucks. Soglayev tried to get a piece of the action.

Leveraging state ties

Soglayev’s career traces the recent economic arc of Russia. He commanded a military intelligence unit before leaving the army after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As private enterprise flourished in the 1990s, he joined with a Dutch businessman to import electronic goods.

After a stint in the U.S. working on Wall Street, he returned to Russia and got to know the petrochemicals industry from his perch at Deutsche Bank. That led to a job as chief executive of chemicals producer Sanors.

Rosneft bought Sanors in 2015. Soglayev became Rosneft’s top chemicals executive and an adviser to Rosneft boss Igor Sechin—now the patron of the Coral traders. Soglayev left two years later, and dabbled in various energy ventures.

When Russia’s export machine broke down after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Sechin tapped Eyyub and Garayev to replace the Swiss and U.K. traders that used to handle Rosneft’s oil, the Journal has reported.

The lawyer for Garayev said he wasn’t aware of any legal proceedings with Soglayev. Eyyub couldn’t be reached for comment.

Soglayev says in filings he set up a firm called DIA33 in Dubai to flip Russian oil to foreign buyers. He set his sights on Brazil, where Russian diesel was displacing more expensive American fuel.

His goal was to make Russian fuel palatable to importers who worried that buying directly from Moscow could complicate their dealings with banks wary of violating sanctions. He booked storage space at Brazilian ports and planned to buy diesel from Russian exporters, then sell at a markup to fuel distributors.

Web of transactions

The trading arrangements Soglayev entered into show the convoluted mechanisms that have kept Russian oil flowing beyond the gaze of Western officials. Soglayev alleges he bought Russian diesel from a small firm in Dubai called Serene Resources in late 2023.

He says its CEO, Andrey Romanovskiy, moved to a different company that was controlled by Eyyub and Garayev. Soglayev alleges Romanovskiy told him the Coral network operated through different shell companies to avoid international attention. Soglayev says they discussed the possibility that DIA might later merge with Coral to become its Brazilian trading arm.

A lawyer for Romanovskiy didn’t respond to questions. But in an affidavit reviewed by the Journal, Romanovskiy told a Dubai court his firm was independent, denied that it was controlled by Coral and disputed other details of Soglayev’s case.

Things went south after terminal operators in a Brazilian port rejected an aging tanker full of Russian diesel that Soglayev was supposed to sell, according to filings by Soglayev and some of his opponents. The ship dawdled for weeks, racking up bills, until a different harbor admitted it, according to the filings.

The alleged Coral traders who sold the diesel, frustrated that Soglayev hadn’t paid them, pursued him before an arbitration tribunal in Dubai, accusing him of having oversold his capabilities and effectively stealing the fuel. The tribunal earlier this year ordered Soglayev to pay one of the firms involved in the trade $42 million.

Soglayev responded with his own suits in Dubai and Brazil, alleging Coral ruined his business by approaching his clients and selling to them at discounted prices. The partnership, he claims, was a ruse for Coral to access DIA’s internal information. He claims he is owed more than $500 million in lost business.

Soglayev alleges he received what he perceived to be death threats, including a call from Eyyub to say he had discussed the dispute with a Chechen warlord.

In June, a judge in Dubai banned Eyyub, Garayev and 13 other firms and people from disposing of assets valued up to $704 million as the case moved forward. But he later said his court didn’t have jurisdiction, raising the possibility of the suit being tossed.

Soglayev has appealed to keep the case in the Dubai International Financial Centre, said his lawyer in the U.A.E., David McCoy of ADG Legal.

The freezing order remains in place pending a decision on the appeal. A related lawsuit in Brazil is ongoing.