Swiss prosecutors have charged four bankers with helping to hide tens of millions of Swiss francs on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in one of the first court cases in the West directly involving assets allegedly owned by Russia’s leader.
The four defendants are employees of a Swiss subsidiary of Gazprombank, and among them is the chief executive, Roman Abdlin, who is applying to the Financial Times, which obtained a copy of An indictment, filed by a Zurich court, alleges that the bankers were negligent in allowing accounts to be opened in Switzerland in the name of Sergei Roldugin, cellist and godfather to Putin’s daughter, without questioning the source of the funds.
The indictment stated: “It is known that Russian President Vladimir Putin has an official income of just over 100,000 French francs and he is not rich, but in reality he has huge assets that are managed by people close to him.”
A spokesperson for Gazprombank Swiss, which is shutting down operations as a result of international sanctions against Russia, denied the allegations against bank officials, but declined to comment further on “ongoing legal proceedings”.
The bankers signed statements that the cellist was not a “politically exposed person,” despite widespread public information about his links to the Kremlin and Putin, the document states.
Accounts opened in Switzerland by bankers indicated that Roldugin had assets of at least $50 million and planned to transfer more than $10 million a year to the country through a complex series of shell companies and accounts. The plaintiffs argued: “It was in no way reasonable to regard the declared assets as Roldugin’s.”
The bank’s official file on Roldugin contained only a printout from the website of the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg, where the Russian was conductor, and one negative search result on Worldcheck, a database. Prosecutors claim that the Gazprombank quartet was fully aware of Roldugin’s true importance and connections and did not hesitate to provide the terms for its plan.
The indictment also details, in detail, how the companies set up in Roldugin’s name were set up by employees of the Bank of Russia, who attempted to cover up their involvement through anonymous email addresses.
The Bank of Russia is the bank of Russia’s leading politicians, its majority shareholder and chairman of the board of directors. [Yuri Kovalchuk] He is considered Putin’s treasurer,” according to the indictment.
The case was opened as a result of the 2016 Panama documents leak, a collection of more than 11 million documents related to 214,000 offshore entities, some of which were used to hide illegally obtained wealth.
An international consortium of media organizations, including German magazine Der Spiegel and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, have highlighted Roldugin and his closeness to Putin and cited his vast, unexplained wealth.
Finma, the financial markets regulator in Switzerland, has opened an investigation against Gazprombank as a result of the leak. In 2018, the regulator concluded that the bank had “committed a serious breach of anti-money laundering due diligence requirements for the period 2006 to 2016” and imposed severe penalties. He also lodged a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s office in Zurich, which led to the opening of a criminal investigation.
Prosecutors are now seeking prison sentences for the four bankers involved, with the trial scheduled to begin in Zurich on March 8.
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