India's richest families benefit from Russian crude oil deals: Bessent

By Chiranjivi Chakraborty

  US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed some of the “richest families in India” benefited from the purchase of Russian crude oil, while reiterating plans to boost tariffs on the South Asian nation. 

“We have planned to up the tariffs on India — these are secondary tariffs for buying the sanctioned Russian oil,” Bessent said in an interview to CNBC on Tuesday. Before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, less than 1% of India’s oil came from Russia, “and now, I believe, it’s up to 42%. So India is just profiteering,” he said.  

“They are reselling, they made $16 billion on excess profits — some of the richest families in India,” he said. 

 

The latest comments show that President Donald Trump’s administration is doubling down on its attack on India and indirectly Asia’s richest billionaire Mukesh Ambani for purchase of cheap Russian oil. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd., which runs the world’s largest petroleum refining complex in western India, has been among the buyers of Russian crude. It has bought cargoes under long-term contracts. 

An email query to Reliance outside of business hours was not immediately replied to.  

Earlier this week, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro in a column for the Financial Times took a swipe at the South Asian country’s oil tycoons and their ties to the government, saying that the surge in purchases were driven by “profiteering by India’s Big Oil lobby” and not “domestic oil consumption needs.” 

Trump has threatened to raise the levies on Indian exports to the US to 50% — among the highest on any country’s products — on Aug. 27. Half of that penalty is for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil. The South Asian nation has defended its right to buy oil from the cheapest source, calling the additional tariffs “unreasonable.” 

Historically, India hasn’t been a significant importer of Russian crude, depending more heavily on the Middle East. That changed in 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine and a $60-per-barrel price cap imposed by the Group of Seven nations that aimed to limit the Kremlin’s oil revenue while keeping supplies flowing globally. India’s ability to purchase discounted cargoes was a feature of that mechanism acknowledged by US officials. 

Bessent defended the administration’s lack of secondary tariffs on China, which buys more crude oil from Russia than India. China was importing 13% of its oil from Russia before the 2022 invasion, and now it’s 16%, “so China has a diversified input of their oil,” he said.