‘Russian President’s Friend Laundering Millions Through Bank’
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) –
Leaked documents suggest that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest friends used a prominent British bank to launder millions of dollars and evade Western sanctions. Separately the company of U.S. President Donald Trump allegedly benefited from laundered money, but officials denied those charges.
The revelations are among a trove of documents obtained by a global network of investigative journalists. Among those in the spotlight is Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg who knew Putin since childhood. Together with his brother Boris, Rotenberg became co-owner of the Stroygazmontazh (SGM) group. That’s the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia.
But financial restrictions, or sanctions, were imposed on Rotenberg by the United States and the European Union in 2014. That meant Western banks could face severe consequences for doing business with him.
The sanctions were in response to Russia’s role in the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and Moscow’s support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
However, despite these punitive measures, it seemed business as usual for Rotenberg. Leaked documents suggest Putin’s friend used Britain’s Barclays Bank in London to launder money and dodge sanctions. Records from an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department show that he conducted $60 million in transactions through a company called Advantage Alliance at Barclays.
BARCLAYS INVOLVED
The documents reveal that Rotenberg laundered money through Barclays from 2012 through 2016, including during the sanctions regime. Barclays closed the Advantage Alliance account only in late 2016. But it conveniently allowed another Rotenberg account at the bank, Ayrton Development Limited, to remain open until 2017.
That gave him plenty of time to launder the money. In July, a U.S. Senate investigation alleged that the Rotenberg brothers used luxury art purchases to evade sanctions.
Barclays has denied that it knowingly violated sanctions and says it complied with all legal and regulatory obligations.
The Rotenberg accounts’ information was only part of a massive trove of 2,100 documents from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Treasury Department.
They were initially leaked to media outlet BuzzFeed. But it shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 400 journalists around the world.
MASSIVE PAYMENTS
The trove of documents indicates that over the period from 1999 to 2017, global banks moved more than $2 trillion in payments they believed were suspicious.
They show how significant banks, including HSBC, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank, helped criminal networks worldwide move and hide money.
On Monday, HSBC’s share price fell to its lowest level since 1995 after revelations, it allowed fraudsters to transfer $80 million around the world.
That happened even after it had learned of their scam, which involved investors having to recruit people to make money. The scam led to one victim being murdered. His body was found in a vineyard in the United States, recalls sergeant Chris Pacheco of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department.
“Most of his body was submerged underwater. He was bound. He had coverings over his face,” he said. “We knew that he was deceased. He was a victim in a scheme. He was a victim of a homicide. Just a true, true victim.”
TRUMP INVOLVED?
The investigation also alleges that U.S. President Trump may have profited from dirty money. Olichargs from Kazakhstan allegedly bought apartments at a Trump New York property with laundered money. But Trump’s company denies knowing who these customers were, though they did make money from the transactions.
The revelations are incredibly tricky for Deutsche Bank, which has been dealing with Trump. Germany’s largest bank already faced millions of dollars in fines in 2017 over shady dealings in Russia. The documents suggest the activities were more widespread than previously thought.
But Deutsche Bank spokesman Jörg Eigendorf denies wrongdoing by the institution’s CEO. “He founded a unit that leads these investigations,” he stressed. “There have since been also external investigations. And at no stage could any responsibility be traced back to the head of the business”.
In neighboring Netherlands, Dutch bank ING came under pressure Monday to explain revelations that its Polish subsidiary helped customers channel suspicious money out of Russia.
The U.S. documents showed ING Bank Slaski facilitated at least roughly $656 million in payments to companies that formed part of a Russian money-laundering network in 2014 and 2015.
NO COMMENT
The ING declined to explain the report saying it doesn’t comment on individual customers or transactions.
However, the latest controversy comes two years after Dutch prosecutors fined the bank 775 million euros ($912 million) for negligence to prevent money laundering. Since then, the bank says it has taken steps to improve controls.
However, the revelations have underscored concerns that financial institutions and governments are not doing enough to stop illicit money flows.
The FinCEN dump is the latest secretive global financial records breach since a massive leak in 2017 from two offshore legal and corporate service providers
Known as the Paradise Papers, they revealed the shady offshore financial dealings of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders.
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