Controversy
See also: Russian influence operations in AustriaA number of investigators have suggested that Raiffeisen Zentralbank is involved in laundering money for the Russian mafia.
When Moldovan journalist Natalia Morar investigated money flows involving Raiffeisen Zentralbank, she says she received a death threat from the FSB and she was banned from Russia.
Gazprom spokesman has said that Raiffeisen Investment AG is a Gazprom partner in RosUkrEnergo, an opaque Ukrainian company. On 6 August 2004 Interfax reported "100 percent subsidiaries of Russia's Gazprombank and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank created the RosUkrEnergoprom company for the supply of Turkmen gas to the Ukrainian market. The company, shared by the parties 50-50, will be registered in Switzerland." However, Raiffeisen Investment has said that it only manages RosUkrEnergo for unknown "Ukrainian businessmen".
According to documents uncovered during the United States diplomatic cables leak US-diplomats suspected Raiffeisen Investment was "a front to provide legitimacy to the gas company that we suspect he controls".
One of the cases involved Russian bank called "Diskont". To illustrate the scale of money laundering, $1.6 billion was transferred from Diskont Bank's accounts to Raiffeisen on August 29, 2006. According to New York Times, Diskont received a 10% commission from the money transfers. In September 2006, the deputy chairman of the Central bank of Russia, Andrey Kozlov, revoked Diskont's license. Just days later Kozlov was murdered.
The bank has been also suspected of laundering money for the Italian mafia.
Read more about this topic: Raiffeisen Zentralbank
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)