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The Troika Laundromat
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoIt’s interesting that the fraud and laundered money is always blamed on the bad guy when in fact it should be the banking system that is held accountable. If you take large sums of money with a deposit description “for bills” without doing anything about it, well, sorry to say but you’ve failed to do your part in ensuring that money is not dirty. Banks are incentivized to look the other way and when they do get busted, nobody goes to jail, they pay a small fine considering the large picture and go on business as usual - see HSBC
- jstanley 8y agoI completely disagree. It's correct to blame crimes on the bad guys. Theft and fraud are actual crimes with actual victims. Money laundering is a non-crime, and the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer an authoritarian financial system just because some people commit crimes. Banks should provide a dumb service like phone companies do. It wouldn't be reasonable for the phone company to interrogate you about why you're making so many late-night phonecalls, and it's not reasonable for the bank to interrogate you about why you're depositing so much legal tender.
- avmich 8y ago> Money laundering is a non-crime I don't agree with this, by definition of ML as illegal operation as made with illegal money.
- shkkmo 8y agoMoney laundering is fraud. Most of the transactions involved companies created and owned by the Troika Dialog. This money laundering directly enabled a number of very harmful and illegal activities. While I can understand valuing and protecting financial privacy, I fail to see how you can see Troika Dialog as blameless here. In general, financial privacy must be balanced against financial transparency and enforcement. Tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and other financial crimes come with significant costs to society.
- baybal2 8y agoIf it really should, opening a bank should not be easier than opening a bank account. In, I think, half of Western world, banking licenses are issued with no questions asked aside basic formalities. You can't justify at all how anal are the banking regulations towards individuals, when bank owners are allowed an effective anonymity and life free of state intrusion. Today's AML mass hysteria is not much different from the terrorism "security theatre" – completely ineffectual
- Terr_ 8y ago> Money laundering is a non-crime By that logic, a Ponzi scheme would also a "non-crime," since in both cases there's "real money", and in both cases someone is lying (i.e. committing fraud) about the details of its flow.
- NullPrefix 8y ago>Money laundering is a non-crime Burning the body isn't a crime either? He was already dead, so it's OK.
- oh_sigh 8y ago> when in fact it should be the banking system that is held accountable Why instead of, and not in addition to?
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoYou could in addition to, but if you made sure the banks pay out their ass for their crimes then they’d make it extremely difficult for criminals to move their plunder.
- austincheney 8y agoI work for a major bank. None of that is correct. Ethics and reputation are extremely important to my employer and they are held accountable.
- andrepd 8y agoYou dropped the "/s".
- shkkmo 8y agoDo you have any specific examples or information besides an appeal to authority?
- austincheney 8y agoUsing a search engine I was able to find this (first result) http://investor.bankofamerica.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71595&p=irol-antimoneylaundering http://investor.bankofamerica.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71595&p=ir... If you are hoping that I would reveal some internal information I will leave you disappointed.
- shkkmo 8y agoI was hoping you had something to contribute to the conversation besides appeals to authority and PR sites. > Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is no stranger to paying fines. According to data compiled by investment firm Keefe, Bruyette and Woods Inc., the Brian Moynihan-led company has shelled out the most money in fines over the years, especially in the time span following the 2008 financial crisis. > “Bank of America Merrill Lynch went to astonishing lengths to defraud its own institutional clients about who was seeing and filling their orders, who was trading in its dark pool, and the capabilities of its electronic trading services,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday. https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2018/03/23/bank-of-america-pays-42-million-penalty.html https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2018/03/23/bank-of-...
- austincheney 8y ago
- wpietri 8y agoI think you've set up a false dichotomy here. Fraud and money laundering should be blamed on the people doing the fraud and the money laundering. However, there's no reason we can't also blame facilitators of fraud and money laundering for facilitating crime. A pawn shop can be a totally legitimate business. And thieves should be blamed for their thefts. But if a pawn shop is profiting from moving stolen goods, that is also wrong. When asking "who's to blame?" between the thief and the fence, there's nothing stopping us from saying "both".
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoPawn shops don’t take deposit and engage in fractional reserve banking. Money laundering is only possible on the scales mentioned when financial institutions fail to do their job.
- Const-me 8y agoIn Russia it’s the same bad guys controlling the whole country, including it’s financial institutions. The largest bank in Russia is Sberbank, 50% state owned, managed by Putin’s friend from 90s. Second largest is VTB, this one is 60.9% state owned.
- chupasaurus 8y ago85% of market (by assets) is controlled by government owned banks. There is only one large private bank in Russia after collapse of so-called Moscow Bank Ring (4 pretty big banks were basically frauding the regulator with holding other's stocks as reported assets, one went bakrupt - all others did).
- crushcrashcrush 8y agoThis is an absolutely incredible read. Guess sanctions only impact the poor...
- option 8y agothey only help “strongmen” leaders become even more popular among their populations because of an “external” enemy.
- andrepd 8y agoAbsolutely enthralling so far. A must read for everyone.
- calimac 8y agolike all of Obama's $2-$20 donations from gift cards originating in the Middle East. Nothing to see here zombies
- SpaceRaccoon 8y agoI suspect that Western authorities tolerate this because it brings billions of dollars into their economies.
- radicaldreamer 8y agoThe British definitely do, it’s part of their “second empire.” Almost every overseas possession is now a haven (from BVI, the Caymans, to independent states like the UAE and Singapore).
- dandare 8y agoMeanwhile, the London real estate prices increased 5-10 fold between 1995 and 2015. Coincidence? https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-index https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-index
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nikanj 8y agoWe constantly hear the Russian economy is in shambles, but at the same time the whole planet seems flush with shady Russian cash. I’m honestly confused by the real status of their economy.
- otoburb 8y agoWouldn't that sort of make sense that if Russian cash is floating around the rest of the planet then there's less of said wealth circulating within the Russian domestic economy?
- kvartz 8y agoEconomy failing->as result currency falls. If one would want to move said currency to USD or gold, it would be shady; especially given level of corruption and barriers from banks and state to move currency internationally. Makes sense to me.
- kartan 8y ago> We constantly hear the Russian economy is in shambles, but at the same time the whole planet seems flush with shady Russian cash. There are 144.5 million Russians. Even if individually they are poor the country can be very rich. Also is the matter of illegal arms sales and break of international embargos. You can sell your gas or weapons to countries that you have signed treaties not to. That is a lot of money that is not part of your legal economy but can surface anywhere in the world. High wealth inequality also makes this a more acute problem. A few people have a lot of money to spend in lobbying and luxury while most of the population lives in relative poverty.
- avmich 8y agoI've heard estimates of ~2T left country over ~10 years - this kind of money supposedly surfaces around, about half in US, a lot in UK. The economy is heavily linked to oil and gas prices. This is a sort of "specialization" of the country - with exception of arms and some space tech, other sectors of economy are in rather modest shape. Recent estimate was that productivity is behind leading countries by a few decades (e.g. as it was in US in 1980-s).
- 8y ago
- bane 8y agoI take it the dataset isn't available anywhere for download?
- matt4077 8y agoThey have some data available at https://data.occrp.org https://data.occrp.org. As far as I can tell, the data for this investigation is not (yet?) accessible. https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/about-the-data https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/about-the-data has some information about it, and includes an address to contact for journalists who want to gain access. The leaked info seems to consist of bank statements. It's unlikely that any bank conducts illegal transactions only, so it is understandable that they cannot release the data to the public without harming lots of legitimate customers.
- r3bl 8y agoDisclosure: I've used to work for OCCRP. That's a platform designed for journalists that indeed contains a lot of scraped data and leaks. It cross-references them, so you can type in a name of the person/company and see the data points mentioning them. Some of the investigations got started precisely because journalists were able to use it to see a connection you can't see otherwise. It handles all the quirkiness that arises from dealing with different alphabets, and it accounts for multiple ways you could type a name from a different alphabet into Latin. The administrators of it manage who gets to see which data sets for obvious reasons. Knowing nothing about this specific investigation, I assume that the data is currently only accessible to the pre-approved journalists (that work on this investigation). The code of the tool is available on GitHub, and if you happen to stumble upon a security issue: https://www.occrp.org/en/responsible-disclosure https://www.occrp.org/en/responsible-disclosure
- pudo 8y ago[OCCRP tech] We're working on it. There's a whole back log of reporting that people have invested months into doing, we'll successively push out parts of the data once those stories are getting published.
- solidsnack9000 8y agoSome of the money that Roldugin’s companies received from the Laundromat originated in a massive Russian tax fraud exposed by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in jail after revealing it. https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/vast-offshore-network-moved-billions-with-help-from-major-russian-bank https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/vast-offshore-netw... Pretty amazing how people show up to fight and get themselves killed on principle in situations like this.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 8y agoWith billions at stake it’s pretty much guaranteed. Like the old saying goes when you extort someone make sure it won’t be cheaper to kill you than to pay you. I think what is amazing is that people show up to fight at all, I don’t think most people can comprehend just how much power a billion dollars can buy you not to mention a multiple of that.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- credit_guy 8y agoThis led to the Magnitsky Act [1], where the U.S. slapped heavy sanctions on a number of Russian individuals believed to have been implicated in his death. This hurt Russia so much that they retaliated in a number of ways, one of which is the topic of investigations of a prosecutor whose name is Mueller... [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act
- akhilcacharya 8y ago..and this is what the "adoptions" talk was a euphemism for during the Trump Tower meeting [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act#Ban_on_U.S._adoption_of_Russian_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act#Ban_on_U.S._adop...
- deniscepko2 8y agoI think Western countries should make a favor and not punish any of that and even encourage Russian money flowing away from Russia. At some point Russian people have to stand up for themselves. This Oligarch situation is so bad its upsetting
- nikanj 8y agoThe Western countries are feeling part of the pain, too. Say 50 Oligarchs each want to smuggle a nice $100M out of the country, and plop into New York / London real estate. That is a quite significant part of the newly built homes in the hot spot cities.
- baybal2 8y agoNot at the point when what makes a nation has effectively been destroyed. I'd say, with mixed feelings, Russia still had a chance until ~2005, after that simply too many of the few worthy people Russia had left gave up and immigrated away. > At some point Russian people have to stand up for themselves. Very few will ever stand for themselves, and much less for others. It's hard to shed blood and stand for ingrate whining pissants, when you know that the next day they will vote in a new Putin. I have no solution to ~85% of Russian electorate simply voting for a man promising more free sausages. Russia is irreformable. Only the most dramatic events will change that.
- deniscepko2 8y agoI kind of had the same point. West should help tip Russians over the edge. Lets say they encourage Russian money laundering I think at some point even the weakest will say enough is enough like in 1917. Me myself being of Russian decent i can tell that Russia either has to become a bunch of different countries (Dagestan, Chechnya, Altai and etc) or it can only function under Communist regime. Its just that human nature and culture is weird, selfish and with no empathy. Look at their religious leaders for example its disgusting
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIt sounds like you're saying make Russia/ex-Soviet countries so poor that the people have to fight for enough food to live? And do this in a way that enriches the already wealthy oligarchs? Kinda like "don't help poor people, you're just ruining their motivation"??
- charliebrownau 8y agoConsidering almost ALL mainstream "reporting" is LEFT WING political ACTIVISM , wouldn't the police just get more "hate speech" and false flags Also if ACTUAL crime is happening or happened why not RING THE BLOODY LOCAL POLICE
- jvln 8y agoAfter panama papers I realized that money are moved using fax machines. It seems to start moving money you need to know company name and its representetive. Having this info sending a fax stating move money from A to B is sufficient. I assume huge amounts can be or are stolen from ofshore companies.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoposted this already yesterday, identical URL and title. I don't understand why my submission got demoted and this one is at the front https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309329
- mojuba 8y agoTiming and luck. It is more important though that a good link eventually gets the exposure it deserves.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agono that's fine, the goal is to have it seen and see what people think. but it seems my understanding of how links get promoted is incorrect. When submitting links that have been shared hours/days (or sometimes weeks) before, then the submit usually takes me straight to the page of the original poster. It seems that there is a limit of how many links can be on the frontpage by a given user or something (but that too doesn't seem right considering that in Dec I had 4 links on the FP top 30 on the same day). For long time I thought I understood this site but now it's clear to me I know nothing :)
- mojuba 8y agoNo wait, those aren't the same URLs actually if you look at them. So that explains it ;)
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agohmm, but they are the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=occrp.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=occrp.org
- tempodox 8y agoI think it's somewhat telling that the thing I imagine being laundered when I hear or see the word Laundromat, is money.
- elmo2you 8y ago1. It is great this this information is published. People should know about these crimes. I sincerely hope that all involved with rot in jail (or worse, for all I care). It would be even better if it also would drop the curtain on the people who (so far) remained out of view in all this. 2. What is absent (surprisingly, if you're naive), both in this publication and in general regarding the topic, is the relationship between Russian oligarchs, their rise to power after the collapse of the USSR, and the assistance they got from mostly foreign/US "advisers", "investors" and "businessmen". All of which were eager to at least make as much profit from the chaos, and probably had full blessing of the US government to corrupt Russia as much as they could. 3. Somehow, the foreign individuals who played key roles in creating the Russian "reality" as it exists today, just happen to (mostly) stay out of view in every publication. That some of these individuals are themselves under investigation in Russia, some of which lost much of their "gains" made in Russia, and now some of the most vocal driving factors behind the current anti-Russia rhetoric/hysteria in the USA, can of course be all just coincidence. 4. Looking at the list of supporting organizations on the OCCRP's web site, it would be rather extraordinary if this publication does not have a political bias, since many of these supporters have rather blatantly open political agendas (with some of them at least being suspect of being criminal organizations in their own right). 5. What if this publication is first and foremost a political chess move, in a large scale turf war between competing criminal organizations? All of which are effectively outside the reach of legal scrutiny. I do not claim that this is the case, but it might be worth considering.
- mprev 8y agoI don’t deny that there is more to all of this than most of us see. However, much of your comment leaves me feeling “citation needed”. What supporting material can you link to?
- elmo2you 8y agoI understand that feeling and I agree that it requires citations. Yet, I will not give any. I have my reasons for that. Either way, a little bit of personal digging should unearth more than enough to keep one reading for a while. On the other hand, feel equally free to consider/dismiss it all as mere speculation.
- TheAlchemist 8y agoI highly recommend Bill Browder book on this topic - "Red Notice: How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy". It's an awesome read - and very interesting. It's written by the guy who used to run the biggest investment fund in Russia and was quite an activist. Later, he and his lawyers uncovered a massive tax fraud scheme, involving a lot of important people - he became number 1 enemy there. One of the lawyers - Magnitsky, got imprisoned for several month, then beaten to death there. He (Browder) now spend his time trying to uncover more of the abuses in Russia (the recent wave of investigation into European banks is one of the fruits of his work). The book is mind boggling.
- cbzbc 8y agoHe was an activist in the 'investor activist' sense when he was running the fund.