"Investigators said the project represents one of the largest releases of banking information ever and it entangled Western banks, including Citigroup, Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank." - Troika Laundromat - 11:47 AM 3/5/2019
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"organized crime and terrorism" - Google News: An explosive exposé on a $9 billion Russian money laundering operation entangles Citigroup, Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank - INSIDER
An explosive exposé on a $9 billion Russian money laundering operation entangles Citigroup, Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank INSIDER
A project detailing 'The Troika Laundromat' outlines a $9 billion money laundering operation with links to politicians and Western banks.
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"organized crime and terrorism" - Google News
1 day ago - Billions of dollars moved from Russia to the west, mixing legitimate wealth with apparently fraudulent funds.
21 hours ago - Dubbed the Troika Laundromat, the investigation is named after the Russian private investment bank Troika Dialog that allegedly created and ...
1 day ago - The main purpose of the system we've named the Troika Laundromat was to channel billions of dollars out of Russia. But it was much more ...
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Troika Laundromat
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Troika Laundromat. A special investigation into leaked papers showing how vast sums of Russian money were channelled into western banks.
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- "The Troika Laundromat" is a $9 billion alleged money laundering operation with links to politicians and Russia's largest private investment bank, Troika Dialog.
- The operation was uncovered by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Lithuanian news site 15min.lt., in partnership with The Guardian.
- Investigators said the project represents one of the largest releases of banking information ever and it entangled Western banks, including Citigroup, Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank.
- The explosive report sent the shares of the Raiffeisen tumbling 14% in Tuesday trading. The bank is opening an internal investigation.
A new project has uncovered what it says is a $9 billion alleged money laundering operation with links to corrupt politicians and Russia's largest private investment bank, Troika Dialog.
The operation was uncovered by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Lithuanian news site 15min.lt, in partnership with the Guardian, which outlined how billions were funnelled between shell-companies into the global banking system.
The investigators said the project represents one of the largest releases of banking information ever, involving more than $470 billion sent in 1.3 million leaked transactions from 233,000 companies.
The OCCRP said "The Troika Laundromat" was active in syphoning an estimated $4.8 billion into Europe and the US between 2006 to early 2013, and was formed by at least 75 interconnected offshore companies.
The dozens of companies in the system generated $8.8 billion of internal transactions to obscure the origin of the cash, the report said.
"The Laundromat allowed Russian oligarchs and politicians to secretly acquire shares in state-owned companies, to buy real estate both in Russia and abroad, to purchase luxury yachts, to hire music superstars for private parties, to pay medical bills, and much more," the OCCRP said in a release on its website.
"To protect themselves, the wealthy people behind this system used the identities of poor people as unwitting signatories in the secretive offshore companies that ran the system."
Raiffeisen stock tanks
Funds were then distributed through a series of major Western banks, including Citigroup, Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank, the OCCRP claims. The explosive report sent the shares of the Raiffeisen tumbling 14% in Tuesday trading.
Raiffeisen, in a comment to Business Insider, said it was conducting an internal investigation:
"Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is not familiar with the concrete allegations and does not have any further information on the content of the complaint. RBI complies with all anti-money laundering requirements. Its compliance systems and processes have been, and continue to be, regularly reviewed by external parties and are confirmed to be in compliance with the legal requirements."
In an emailed statement to Business Insider, Deutsche Bank said:
"Deutsche Bank's clients are so-called respondent banks. It is first and foremost the task of the respondent bank to check its customers in accordance with the applicable know-your-customer regulations."
Citigroup declined to comment.
The investigation goes right to the top of Russian politics, with links to Russian President Vladimir Putin's friends and business associates.
Prince Charles link
Among the revelations from the OCCRP is the claim that in 2009, 2010, and 2011, three transfers totalling $200,000 went to the Prince's Charities Foundation, a fundraising vehicle for Prince Charles.
The money, intended to "preserve architectural heritage in England" came from a British Virgin Islands shell company, Quantus Division Ltd, according to the Guardian. The funds were used to rescue a stately home in Scotland named Dumfries House, which was set to be auctioned off in 2007.
There is no suggestion that recipients were aware of the original source of the money.
Dumfries House was ultimately rescued from being privately auctioned after Prince Charles managed to rapidly raise £45 million ($59 million), an effort which left the foundation in debt, some of which was plugged by Armenian businessman Ruben Vardanyan who was thanked with a black-tie dinner in 2014.
The Prince of Wales' Charitable Foundation and The Dumfries House Trust "apply robust due diligence processes in accordance with Charity Commission and Scottish Charity Regulator guidelines as well as legislation relating to money laundering, the Bribery Act, terrorism and political activity," a spokesman for The Prince's charities said in an emailed statement to Business Insider. "In the case of the examples highlighted, no red flags arose during those processes."
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In a country where the Moscow-backed rebellion in the eastern region known as Donbass has left some 11,000 people dead, there could be no more bitter accusation against someone running for president of the government in Kiev than to call her or him “pro-Russian.” But that happens all the time.
“Today our opponents use Manafort’s textbook, the same manipulative story about our candidate Tymoshenko being a pro-Russian politician,” Vlasenko said.
And it’s not like Tymoshenko doesn’t give as good, or as bad, as she gets when she goes after Poroshenko.
Last week the plot thickened. Tymoshenko and a group of MPs from her bloc accused Ukraine’s president of treason. Tymoshenko blamed him for smuggling military spare parts to Russia. Tymoshenko called on the parliament to start impeachment procedures against the president.
In a recent interview with the Associated Press Tymoshenko said that Poroshenko was planning to bribe the electorate with $37 per each vote.
“According to our research, Poroshenko will spend up to $300 million of administrative resources on bribing millions of voters,” Vlasenko told The Daily Beast.
Tymoshenko claimed in a Facebook post that the Interior Ministry has started two criminal investigations against Poroshenko based on her testimony.
In fact, society is disillusioned with the old political models—and the old politicians. Both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are in their fifties, and the candidate leading in the polls right now is a 41-year-old comedian named Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukraine has an electoral process where no candidate is likely to win in the first round on March 31, so everything rides on who makes it into round two on April 21. The latest polls show Zelensky is a shoo-in for the runoff with more than 25.1 percent of the votes. Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are slugging it out for second place with 16.6 percent and 16.2 percent respectively.
“Just like Trump broke into American politics, Zelensky—an actor, media manager and television producer—emerges on the Ukrainian political stage,” television host Yevgeny Kiselev told The Daily Beast. “He might not be knowledgeable about reforms or the economy but people still like him, as there is a huge demand for a change in the elite.”
Kisilev insists that Zelensky is the only major candidate who does not use the Manafort textbook to smear his competitors. But he’s certainly been the target of others who do.
Dmitry Razumkov, Zelensky’s campaign manager, says his competitors attack him with “false accusations” of corruption, of using drugs, of doing business in Russia. “Just like in Manafort’s textbook President Poroshenko has used false stories about our candidate. This is the most primitive method: first the authorities make up kompromats [compromising material] and then they distribute them through the media that they control,” Razumkov said.
“Manafort looked for social differences, pushed on sore issues; he divided our people, who speak both Russian and Ukrainian languages; we, on the contrary, try to unite all regions,” Razumkov said.
The pressure on Zelensky increased this week.
“In the past few days we’ve seen video clips attacking our candidate, both on television and on YouTube, negative advertising saying that he is under the control of an oligarch,” Razumkov said.
In fact, most of Zelensky’s critics say the comedian is not independent, that exiled oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky is behind the actor’s presidential campaign.
That too sounded like an old political pathology: control of Ukraine’s political power by a club of rich boys.
Just a couple of years ago the International Monetary Fund lost its patience with Kiev after a number of multi-billion-dollar frauds involving Kolomoisky and other billionaires allegedly stealing taxpayers’ money.
Zelensky denied that Kolomoisky could control his decisions.
“If Zelensky wins,” says Razumkov, “neither Kolomoisky, nor any other oligarch would be able to influence his strategy, the state will influence the oligarchs.”
Zelensky’s supporters do not think much about his ties with the oligarchs. Many in today’s Ukraine just want to forget about Manafort, Yanukovych, and their corrupt and manipulative methods all together. “Imagine, if Zelensky wins, Putin would look like an old boring dictator and our young president would be an example of fun, a modern and successful leader, who is not like anybody we’ve had before,” Yelena Poplavskaya, an office manager from Odessa region said.
On Monday, Zelensky’s campaign staff discovered a bug monitoring their office on Belorusskaya Avenue. Ukrainian Interfax reported that the “listening device” was installed on the rooftop above Zelensky’s office.
“We just learned that somebody has bugged us and listened to us, sitting right next door to our office,” Razumkov told The Daily Beast. “I cannot remember technologies that dirty even during Manafort’s time.”
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On Monday, House Judiciary Chairman Jarrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) launched "a sweeping investigation into President Trump's campaign, businesses, transition, and administration," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. "So they've narrowed the problem to everything he's done. And the House Democrats are not messing around here — they've sent document requests to 81 people and entities."
"Trump's bad week really got into gear," however, with last week's House Oversight Committee hearing with Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Colbert said. "The Democrats pushed Cohen to reveal as much as he could," while "Republicans didn't even bother asking Cohen a single substantive question. Instead they just called him a liar."
But "saying we shouldn't believe Cohen because he lied in the past is not a good argument," since "Trump hired him to be his liar," Colbert added. "He wanted a dirtbag lawyer; he didn't want Atticus Finch." Colbert tried out what Gregory Peck would have done with Cohen's threats, anyway. He also explained what Trump meant when he tweeted about Cohen's "just released manuscript for a book" about "Trump."
About two dozen Democrats are running for president or considering it, Colbert continued, but "the current frontrunner is Vermont Sen. — and man who would've gotten you health care if it wasn't for those meddling kids — Bernie Sanders. This weekend, Sanders held two big rallies," first in Brooklyn and then Chicago. "And unlike the last time he ran, Bernie made this rally personal," Colbert said — maybe too personal: "If you're trying to get elected as the oldest president ever, maybe don't talk about what your allowance was in the 1940s."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), meanwhile, has found a beloved surrogate in her dog Bailey, Colbert noted, "which is cute, although it does not bode well for 2020 if Warren's supporters are that enthusiastic about a big dumb animal with golden hair." Watch below. Peter Weber
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