Oleg Vlasov, former owner of Baltika Bank through which over 46 billion Russian rubles (about US$1.3 billion at that time) – one third of the funds laundered through the “Moldovan scheme” – were stolen from Russia, was sentenced to 17 years in strict-regime colony in Moscow, IPN reports, with reference to the Russian publication Kommersant.
The trial lasted for a year and a half. The defense asked for the banker’s acquittal, but the court found him guilty of managing a structural unit of an organized criminal community using his official position and also of performing considerable foreign currency transactions based on false documents.
It was determined that since June 2013 until April 2014, Oleg Vlasov, acting as part of the criminal group, transferred money to the main operator of the scheme – the Chisinau-based bank Moldindconbank.
The owner of Baltika is the last of the key participants in the criminal scheme who were sentenced so far. During the past two years, about a dozen of Russian citizens involved in the appropriation of funds via Moldova were punished. Financier Alexander Korkin, who recruited bankers to take part in the scheme, and lawyer Alexei Sobolev, who ensured legal cover for operations, got by 19 years in strict-regime colonies. The convicts were stripped of real estate situated in Moscow, Moscow Oblast and St. Petersburg to the total value of 1.4 billion rubles, vehicles and over US$ 3.1 million.
According to Russian investigators, the criminal group was organized by the notorious Moldovan politician Vladimir Plahotniuc and the owner of Moldindconbank Vyacheslav Platon. These are wanted as the inventor and backer of the scheme, with Plahotniuc having used his extended influence in government, supervision, police and legal circles in Moldova to ensure the scheme was successful.
The scheme consisted of several stages. Initially, a loan agreement was signed between a Russian company in which money was amassed for being transferred abroad and a foreign company chosen for the purpose. Moldovan citizens and Russian companies acted as guarantors. The loan agreement was intentionally broken and the creditor filed a lawsuit against the debtor and the guarantors of these to the Moldovan court, which urgently accepted the complaint and issued writs of execution for Moldindconbank to collect the funds. Settlement accounts of companies that acted as guarantors were opened in 16 Russian banks involved in the scheme, to which money was transferred for being converted into foreign currencies.
The money was transferred to accounts opened by Moldindconbank in the U.S. and Germany and was then confiscated based on Moldovan court orders. Ultimately, the laundered money was transferred to banks, primarily in the EU, to the accounts of plaintiffs – companies controlled by members of the organized criminal group.
The quoted source noted that none of the authors or organizers of the scheme in Moldova was jailed. Only Vyacheslav Platon was sentenced to 18 years behind bars in 2017 for embezzlement of funds from the local Banca de Economii (Savings Bank), but he was later acquitted and the businessman moved to London.
The investigations in the Baltic countries to witch money laundered through Moldovans banks was transferred also didn’t lead to the punishment of swindlers.
