The wealth of Vladimir Putin is one of the biggest mysteries of the international banking system, on which it is based From today the Zurich court can open at least a glimmer. They go to trial The head of the Swiss branch of the Russian Gazprombank Roman Abadan and three other employees of the Institute (one of whom is Swiss). The accusation: He preferred to deposit the money, most likely under the control of the Russian president, without investigating its true source.
There are certainly many accusations and clues regarding the breadth of Putin’s legacy. At a hearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, Bill Browder stated that, in his opinion, the Russian president controls assets worth two hundred billion dollars. Browder has first-hand experience of Russian capitalism: The Hermitage Fund was for years the largest foreign investor in the country. However, Putin officially receives a salary equivalent to about 150 thousand euros a year, owns only 75 square meters of real estate in Moscow and lives in another apartment of 148 square meters.
Putin has always denied everything. But inevitably the argument will be discussed today in the Zurich court. The four Gazprombank bankers are accused of accepting more than $50 million in deposits from musician Sergei Roldugin between 2014 and 2016. Nicknamed “Putin’s cellist”, godfather at the christening of one of the dictator’s daughters, conductor of the Mariinsky Museum in St. Petersburg, Gazprom accepted his deposit in Switzerland without bankers being involved as a “politically exposed person”. Since this is a regulatory definition in anti-money laundering procedures, the process ended up with very low levels of scrutiny. Based on this omission, four Gazprombank Swiss bankers, one of whom is Swiss, have been charged with a financial crime. (The bank denies all allegations.)
The story first came to light with the revelations of the Panama Papers in 2016. FINMA, the Swiss financial regulator, used those documents to launch its investigation, which now reaches judges in Zurich. The turning point emerged thanks to some of the Swiss newspaper’s revelations Tags Anzeiger in the past few days. For Switzerland, the trial is also an opportunity to refute widespread suspicions that the money laundering flowing out of Moscow is shielded by the judiciary and much of the banking system. To be sure, the Association of Swiss Banks estimates that institutions in the union today have up to $200 billion deposited in the name of Russian citizens, while the amounts frozen are no more than 4% of the total.
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