Compliance
Moldova To Charge Bankers Involved in $20 Billion Money Laundering Scam - Report

In a new twist on stories of money laundering scams, it is
reported that the east European state of Moldova plans to charge
four or five bankers with money laundering, saying they helped
shift as much as $20 billion in illicit cash from Russia to
Latvia.
Bloomberg quoted Vasile Sarco, head of the country’s
money-laundering prevention unit, as saying: ““The investigation
is close to being finalized.” The report said Moldova’s central
bank has fined a local lender and its management after a probe
into $18 billion to $20 billion of suspicious transactions
between 2010 and 2014.
The scheme was first reported by the Organized Crime and
Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit investigative
journalism group, which said the activity the largest it’s
encountered in the former Soviet Union. If confirmed, the number
is more than double the size of Moldova’s $8 billion economy.
The group claims that 19 Russian banks used fake debts and court
cases in Moldova to launder the money, transferring the funds
from Moldova’s Moldindconbank to Latvia’s Trasta Kommercbanka,
the news service said. Moldindconbank reportedly called the
accusations “groundless”. Trasta strictly followed all laws, the
news service quoted a spokesperson as saying.
Russia’s anti-money laundering authority, Rosfinmonitoring,
declined to comment, the report added.