Moldova tightens noose around bankers involved in $20bn money laundering scam

Moldova is reportedly planning to charge four or five bankers with money laundering for allegedly aiding transfer nearly $20bn in illicit cash from Russia to Latvia.

"The investigation is close to being finalized," Vasile Sarco, head of the country’s money-laundering prevention unit told Bloomberg News.

Moldova’s central bank has fined a local lender and its management after a probe into $18bn to $20bn of suspicious transactions between 2010 and 2014, the publication quoted Governor Dorin Dragutanu as saying.

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a non-profit investigative journalism center, first reported the.

The OCCRP claimed that it’s the largest it’s encountered in the former Soviet Union. The figure is over more than double the size of Moldova’s $8bn economy.

The OCCRP alleged that 19 Russian banks used fake debts and court cases in Moldova to legitimize the money, transferring the funds from Moldova’s Moldindconbank to Latvia’s Trasta Kommercbanka.

However, Moldindconbank termed the allegations ‘groundless,’

All of its operations have ‘fully respected Moldova’s legislation and central bank rules,’ the bank said in a statement.

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