On a sunny spring afternoon in Monaco, Filippo Ghirelli strikes a cheerful tone as he turns his laptop around to show off a view of the Mediterranean from his office window. “I’ve been living here for more than five years. It’s a great base,” he says on a video call, before rattling off a list of cities—London, New York, Dubai—he often travels to for business.

Three months later, he speaks with Forbes again, this time from London. “After graduating from college [in Rome], I left for Africa,” he says, listing more countries—Guinea, Mali—where he first started working in engineering on infrastructure projects.

Ghirelli, 45, has had a peripatetic career. He made a small fortune in real estate in Italy and North Africa in his late 20s and early 30s, then nearly lost it all in Egypt during the Arab Spring. Later he returned to Italy and reinvented himself, founding a firm that reduced energy costs for large companies.

But Ghirelli has India to thank for the lion’s share of his estimated $1.5 billion fortune. In January 2023, Ghirelli closed the deal of a lifetime. Using the proceeds from the partial sale of his energy efficiency firm and real estate investments, he picked up a 25% stake in India’s second-largest oil refinery, located on the country’s western coast, from Singapore-based oil trading giant Trafigura.

When Trafigura and Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft first bought the refinery in 2017 alongside Moscow-based investment firm UCP, the firm was valued at $12.9 billion including debt. Trafigura financed 85% of its portion with a bank loan, paying the rest in cash.

Ghirelli had first expressed interest in buying Trafigura’s stake in 2020. The transaction technically closed in 2021 but was delayed by Indian antitrust authorities.The deal was finally announced in 2023—11 months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—when Trafigura was trying to distance itself from Russian businesses. Ghirelli says that had no effect on the price or his decision to invest, and he bought Trafigura’s stake for $169 million—a 42% discount to what Trafigura paid in 2017. Now, Forbes estimates that stake is worth at least $1.1 billion, net of debt.

Besides the refinery, the firm—called Nayara Energy—also owns India’s largest privately-owned network of gas stations and a deep-water port. As India ramps up imports of cheap Russian oil for its rapidly-growing economy and population, Nayara has profited handsomely. It recorded net income of $760 million on $17.6 billion in revenues in its fiscal year ending in March 2025, up 500% and 25%, respectively, since 2022.

“We've seen the value of the business grow exponentially,” says Ghirelli. “It's a financial investment that's been particularly fortunate.”

Nayara is arguably one of India’s most coveted assets. “Nayara has a very important role. India is a growing country where fuel demand is continuously on the rise,” says Pankaj Srivastava, senior vice president of commodity markets at energy research firm Rystad Energy. “Nayara supplies a significant amount of the country's domestic fuel needs. It's very strategically located.”

According to a March report in Indian outlet The Morning Context, both Saudi........

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