A law firm Nicos Anastasiades founded — and left just before assuming the presidency — moved millions of dollars among shell companies that were deeply entwined with the secretive global money transfer system.
Seven years after a charismatic mobster was gunned down outside a Sarajevo apartment building, prosecutors think they know what happened that night and who was involved—a suspected drug trafficker and a former media mogul now running for president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fahrudin Radoncic and Naser Kelmendi say it is all lies, but a star witness will testify at Kelmendi’s upcoming trial that she heard them make the plan and saw them pay the money for the Serbian killers who took down Ramiz Delalic in 2007. The revelation is one of many in an indictment of Kelmendi handed up by prosecutors in Kosovo.
In an important vote for new members of a top judicial body, five opposition politicians joined forces with Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, to elect pro-government candidates. Just two days later, companies linked to one of these politicians received favorable rulings in long-running land disputes.
Call it the Laundromat. It’s a complex system for laundering more than $20 billion in Russian money stolen from the government by corrupt politicians or earned through organized crime activity. It was designed to not only move money from Russian shell companies into EU banks through Latvia, it had the added feature of getting corrupt or uncaring judges in Moldova to legitimize the funds. The state-of-the-art system provided exceptionally clean money backed by a court ruling at a fraction of the cost of regular laundering schemes. It made up for the low costs by laundering huge volumes. The system used just one bank in Latvia and one bank in Moldova but 19 banks in Russia, some of them controlled by rich and powerful figures including the cousin of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A faction of the 'Ndrangheta based in Toronto allegedly relied on relationships with staff at two major Canadian banks to facilitate their financial activities.
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