Russian laundromat

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As a Russian laundromat (English / international: Russian Laundromat , Russian Российский ландромат) and Russian washing machine are known money laundering procedures , in which between 2010 and 2014 between 22 and 80 billion US dollars smuggled black money from Russia and via Moldova , Latvia and Estonia transferred, laundered in Great Britain and 95 other countries.

The international journalist network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) first became aware of the systematic fraud in 2014 . They called it (translated) " Russian laundromat ". The full extent of the fraud became known through leaked bank documents, which they evaluated together with Novaya Gazeta and more than 20 other media houses . A total of over 1.3 million transactions were made in this context.

So letterbox companies were founded and fake credits were issued between them. These were not served, so that courts ordered the foreclosure of the arrears. The guarantors, mostly chairmen of Russian companies, then paid with said black money. In this way, around 22 billion US dollars were transferred to the intended recipients, including to Latvian bank accounts, via correspondent banks in the Republic of Moldova .

The group of members of the now closed Latvian bank Trasta Komercbanka again set up a system with hundreds of shadow accounts , through which money was then converted or invested worldwide in over 1000 companies, real estate , yachts , jets , industrial goods and other assets . According to The Guardian , 55% of all black money ended up in the UK economy and 44% in 74 other states.

According to the research, between 2010 and 2014 Russian rubles worth tens of billions of dollars were transferred via Deutsche Bank from Moscow, mainly to London and New York . An American who worked in the Russia department of Deutsche Bank received millions of bribes for making these transactions possible. Deutsche Bank was subsequently fined $ 425 million by the New York Financial Market Authority and fined £ 163 million ($ 204 million) by the UK Financial Market Authority .

With black money were in Europe , the boarding fees of British children for wealthy Russians and performances rock bands paid in Russia, as well as luxury goods , for example. Art and Technology bought.

According to the BKA , money channeled into Germany was mainly invested in real estate. In addition, millions of euros flowed into invoices from German companies such as Bogner , Rohde & Schwarz and BASF .

The police were able to assign assets of around 50 million euros to money laundering and seize them. A total of 190 million euros landed in bank accounts in Germany.

A total of around 740 million US dollars flowed into British business transactions via accounts of the Royal Bank of Scotland with 113.1 million and accounts of HSBC with 545 million. According to the Scottish daily The Herald , a total of around 5 billion US dollars flowed into mailbox companies based in Scotland .

About $ 434 million was transferred to the United Arab Emirates in accounts of 11 mailbox companies.

In Moldova, where the Moldindconbank credit institution was used for money laundering, 25 people were charged with fraud . In Russia, 19 banks, including the Russian Central Bank , which laundered the equivalent of 9.7 billion US dollars, were involved.

Between 2010 and 2014, Citibank accounts (35 million) and Bank of America (14 million) accounts received approximately $ 63.7 million in illicit money.

In the United States , among other things, cosmetic surgery, consulting services, and luxury and consumer goods were paid for with the money.

More than $ 6 billion has been transferred and laundered from the Kazakh BTA Bank to its former chairman.

In Switzerland , a double-digit million amount ended up in a company account of cellist Sergej Roldugin .

Troika laundromat

In autumn 2017, another system was discovered in which money originating from Azerbaijan was laundered via the Estonian branch of the Danish Danske Bank in the EU . The project is named after the Russian investment bank Troika Dialog, which, according to research by the OCCRP, was significantly involved in the money laundering system.

Howard Wilkinson, who was head of the trading business of Danske Bank in the Baltic States until 2014 and then left it in dispute, put the extent of the incriminated business before the special committee on financial crime of the European Parliament at 230 billion dollars. The Danske Bank, which was overwhelmed with such large amounts, switched on correspondent banks with JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America and Deutsche Bank , who helped to handle the transactions from 2007 onwards.

In 2013 JPMorgan Chase and in 2015 Deutsche Bank broke off the business relationship with Danske Bank.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Paul Radu: Data leak reveals money pipeline to the West . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on April 13, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Laundered Russian Cash Went Through Big Banks, Guardian Says in Bloomberg
  3. ^ "Deutsche Bank, Mirror Trades, and More Russian Threads" in The New Yorker by Ed Caesar
  4. ↑ Martin Hesse, Andreas Ulrich: Dubious sources: How the Russian money laundering machine works . In: Spiegel Online . February 22, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed February 22, 2019]).
  5. ^ Luke Harding: The Global Laundromat: how did it work and who benefited? . In: The Guardian , March 20, 2017. 
  6. ^ OCCRP - The Russian Laundromat . August 22, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  7. ^ A b British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money . In: The Guardian , March 20, 2017. 
  8. ↑ a b c Global banks handled laundered Russian cash worth hundreds of millions in CNN by Ivana Kottasova on March 24, 2017
  9. ↑ More than half the funds laundered in a major Russian scheme went via the UK . In: The Guardian , March 25, 2017. 
  10. ^ Ed Caesar: Deutsche Bank, Mirror Trades, and More Russian Threads . March 29, 2017, ISSN  0028-792X ( newyorker.com [accessed April 14, 2019]).
  11. ^ Jethro Mullen: Deutsche Bank fined for $ 10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme. January 31, 2017, accessed April 14, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Martin Hesse, Andreas Ulrich: Dubious sources: How the Russian money laundering machine works . In: Spiegel Online . February 22, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 14, 2019]).
  13. ↑ Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier: Hard blow against money launderers . In: sueddeutsche.de . February 20, 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed April 13, 2019]).
  14. ^ Scots shell companies used to launder £ 4 billion out of Russia . March 27, 2017. 
  15. ^ "UAE named in $ 20bn Russian money laundering scheme" in Arabian Business by Sarah Townsend on March 21, 2017
  16. ↑ The Ablyazov Affair: 'Fraud on to Epic Scale' , The Diplomat. 
  17. ↑ Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Paul Radu: data leak reveals money pipeline to the west . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed April 15, 2019]).
  18. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE: Deutsche Bank involved in money laundering scandal at Danske Bank. Retrieved April 15, 2019 .