The head of Russia’s central bank said earlier this year that billions left the country illegally in 2012. However, bne can reveal that the National Bank of Belarus is claiming huge amounts of dirty money have been flowing out of Russia to be laundered in banks across Asia and CEE in a scheme existing since 2009.
Sergei Ignatiev, the former governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) revealed in February – towards the end of his 12-year tenure – that $50bn had been illegally moved out of Russia in 2012. Shell companies, he said, routed the money as payment for bogus import contracts.
Indeed, half of this sum, the CBR chief said, was the work of one interconnected “platform” of companies, apparently set up by a single group of money launderers. “You get the impression that they are all controlled by one well organized group of people,” Ignatiev said, in an interview with business daily Vedomosti. “With a serious concentration of efforts by law enforcement agencies, I think it is possible to find these people.”
Later, addressing the State Duma, Ignatiev detailed the workings of this platform, which he said accounted for $25bn of the total illegal capital export last year. The cash was transferred to foreign bank accounts as payment on bogus imports from Belarus ($15bn) and Kazakhstan ($10bn), fellow members of the Customs Union – the funds likely the fruits of tax evasion, drugs and bribery.
In June, there were reports of a criminal investigation into All-Russian Regional Development Bank for illegal transfers of nearly $1bn in 2011-12, the payments apparently made for fictive imports from Belarus. Intriguingly, the bank is controlled by state-owned oil giant Rosneft.
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