8-22-14 Banking records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) indicate that the Latvian bank Trasta Komercbanka was the final destination for billions of dollars that left Russia in a massive money laundering scheme. https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/latvian-bank-was-laundering-tool/
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Three out of four schemes have already been reported by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which cited an investigation by 17 European media organizations. In two cases, Russian assets were mainly transferred through Moldova (known as the Russian Laundromat), with banks in Estonia handling about $2 billion out of a total of $47 billion, according to the Estonian FIU.
In the third scheme -- the Azeri Laundromat -- companies and state institutions there transferred more than $3.9 billion to non-resident corporate accounts at Estonian banks. A previous estimate by the OCCRP placed the figure much lower, at $2.9 billion, Reimand said. Azerbaijan rejects the OCCRP’s report and Danske has declined to comment pending the findings of an ongoing investigation into its Estonian unit. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/bankers-may-have-moved-13-billion-through-baltic-laundromat
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The Moldovan bank Moldindconbank received more than $20 billion.
Credit: Ion Preașcă/RISE Moldova
3-20-17 Money entered the Laundromat via a set of shell companies in Russia that exist only on paper and whose ownership cannot be traced. Some of the funds may have been diverted from the Russian treasury through fraud, rigging of state contracts, or customs and tax evasion. Money that might have helped repair the country’s deteriorating roads and ports, modernize the health care system, or ease the poverty of senior citizens – was instead deposited in a Moldovan bank.
At the other end of the Laundromat, money flowed out for luxuries, for rock bands touring Russia, and on a small Polish non-governmental organization that pushed Russia’s agenda in the European Union….
Organizers created a core of 21 companies based in the United Kingdom (UK), Cyprus and New Zealand and run by hidden owners. A number of Russian companies then used these companies to move their money out of Russia.
To get the money out, the scheme’s organizers devised a clever misdirection. They created a fake debt among some of these core shell companies and then got a Moldovan judge to order the Russian company seeking to launder funds to pay that debt to a court-controlled account. …The system worked well enough to launder some $20.8 billion – which can be seen in a database showing who received the money: …
Using company records, reporters tracked the names of some clients after executives refused to give them out. They found the heavy users of the scheme were rich and powerful Russians who had made their fortunes from dealing with the Russian state. Among them: Alexey Krapivin, a businessman in the trusted inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin; Georgy Gens, a Moscow businessman who owns the Lanit group, one of the major information technology (IT) distributors in Russia, for Apple, Samsung, ASUS and other computer giants; or Sergey Girdin, whose Russian Marvel group is involved in the IT business and who is an important client of the biggest Russian-owned bank.
Some Laundromat money was funneled to companies owned by Russian citizens abroad, such as Trident International Corp., owned by Pavel Semenovich Flider. Now a naturalized US citizen, Flider was indicted in 2015 for smuggling stockpiles of US electronics components to Russian defense technology firms….
Moldovan-Russian cooperation on the investigation seemed off to a good start when in September 2014, a month after OCCRP published its first Laundromat story, Russian investigators Aleksei Shmatkov and Evgenii Volotovskii arrived in Chișinău to meet their Moldovan counterparts. They bore passports issued with consecutive numbers the day before their arrival, suggesting to the Moldovans they were dealing with secret service agents given credentials just for the meeting.
They stayed for two days and were accompanied around the Moldovan capital by a Russian embassy representative. Moldovan investigators say they got no helpful information from the two visitors – or from anyone in Moscow. https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-exposed/
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2014 A whistleblower contacted senior management in Estonia about the use of the branch by a UK limited liability partnership with alleged links to the family of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intelligence services.
2017 MARCH Danish newspaper Berlingske published first in a series of reports looking at money laundering claims from Russia, Azerbaijan and Moldova against Danske.
2017 JUNE Promontory, a US consultancy, presented a root-cause analysis to Danske that showed about $30bn in non-resident money passed through the Estonian branch at the scandal’s peak in 2013. https://www.ft.com/content/519ad6ae-bcd8-11e8-94b2-17176fbf93f5
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