Swiss prosecutors charge 4 Russian bankers with laundering millions in assets belonging to Vladimir Putin.
The Swiss branch of Russia's Gazprombank has been winding up operations due to sanctions.
ft.com/content/7caf49…
Bank officials classified Putin pal & his daughter's Godfather as a non politically connected customer to avoid due diligence like asking where the money was coming from.
The banks knew who he was but pretended he was just a conductor at a theater.
Who needed to move more than $10M per year through Swiss banks.
Not suspicious at all...
The politically connected Russian bank sending the money to Switzerland tried to hide it's involvement by using anonymous email addresses.
But the #PanamaPapers leaks exposed the shell companies & allowed investigations of global money laundering schemes.
This investigation started in 2016 following the leaks.
By 2018, Swiss regulators had concluded the bank violated the laws. But some Swamp draining was required at the Swiss AG's office before these criminal charges were filed.
So criminal charges for Russian bankers, running a Swiss bank for Gazprom, for laundering tens of milliosn of dollars that actually belonged to Vladimir Putin but was hidden in the name of his daughter's godfather.
Seems important.
#ButNothingsHappening
Last year, the US sanctioned "Putin's cellist" Sergei Roldugin for laundering Putin's money or him.
The Panama Papers revealed that he had over $2B in shell companies, but that figure is likely low as it only included 1 shell company agency from Panama.
news.yahoo.com/u-issues-fresh…
Roldugin has been Putin's best friend since the 1970s.
In 2016, Putin tried to claim Roldugin's income came from owning stock in a Russian bank. The same Russian bank that used anonymous emails to send the cash to Switzerland... web.archive.org/web/2017122607…
Of course people who follow me won't be surprised that much of this wealth came from insider trading on stock in Rosneft & Gazprom.
Like those collusion deals that someone tried to say were involving @realDonaldTrump & @carterwpage but actually involved a lot of Swamp creatures.
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