Media: At least 27 German banks laundered money from the Russian Federation
No fewer than 27 German banks received money that Russian cybercriminals laundered in Europe from 2010 to 2014. The accounts of German credit institutions received a total of 66.5 million dollars.
This has been reported by the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), which participated in an international investigation of the scheme code-named “The Global Laundromat”.
As the newspaper notes, in all cases the money transfers came from the Moldovan Moldindconbank or the Latvian Trasta Komercbanka. Both of these banks are at the center of a large-scale international money-laundering scheme, which SZ calls "The Russian Laundromat ".
The largest amount - 27.4 million dollars - went to the accounts of Commerzbank, while about 24 million dollars went to Deutsche Bank accounts.
Commerzbank declined to comment on this information, pointing out only that compliance with rules aimed at preventing illegal transactions has always been of great importance to the company.
For its part, Deutsche Bank said that it has "significantly strengthened and expanded control systems, and in 2015 hired one thousand new employees in the departments of Compliance and the ‘fight against financial crimes’."
The publication in the Süddeutsche Zeitung appeared as a result of an investigation conducted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), by Novaya Gazeta and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
More than 60 journalists from 32 countries participated in the study of the "Global Laundromat" schemes. At the time, they also worked on the study of the “Panama Papers”, which helped to uncover the secret accounts of many well-known politicians, businessmen, sportsmen, etc., hidden offshore.
In turn, an investigation by British journalists from The Guardian showed that British banks also "laundered" money from Russia. Through 17 of the largest British banks, including HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Barclays, and Coutts, almost $ 740 million was received under the international money-laundering scheme.