Swiss court finds four bankers guilty of facilitating cellist Roldugin’s transfers

The Zurich District Court sentenced four employees of the Swiss subsidiary of Russian bank Gazprom to suspended fines for offenses in handling the accounts of Russian cellist and conductor Sergei Roldugin. As the court ruled, the bank’s employees showed “insufficient diligence in the conduct of financial transactions”, which allowed “a trustee of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin” to transfer dozens millions of francs via Swiss accounts, writing The Bund.
According to the publication, the director of the bank, two senior officials of a financial institution, as well as a customer service consultant are accused of having had business relations with Roldugin in 2014-2016, although they are probably realized that he “couldn’t”. t be the beneficiary of assets of 50 million francs.
By court decision, the head of the bank was fined 180 daily rates of 3000 Swiss francs each, two other managers of a financial organization – fined 180 daily rates of 350 and 500 Swiss francs, respectively . The client advisor will pay a fine of 120 daily rates of CHF 400 each.
However, these fines are imposed on probation, i.e. they only have to be paid if the convicts re-offend during the two-year probation period.
Therefore, in fact, the defendants in the case are likely to avoid any punishment in principle. At the same time, they are not prohibited from professionally carrying out activities related to the banking sector.
As the newspaper notes, Gazprombank and Gazprombank Suisse are “financial offshoots” of the state-controlled Russian energy and commodities group Gazprom. The Swiss “daughter” of the Russian “Gazprombank” ceased operations in the fall of 2022 and is now being liquidated.
The case against the bankers was triggered by the publication of the Panama Papers, whose data showed that Roldugin had Zurich accounts “on paper”, which raised suspicions about the link of these funds with the Russian president.
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority opened an investigation a few days after the publication of the file and concluded that the bank “had seriously violated the obligations of due diligence of the law on money laundering”, then filed a complaint. criminal proceedings at the Zurich public prosecutor’s office.
“It is impossible to establish who the real beneficiary was,” the judge said when the verdict was announced. “It was clear to the court that it couldn’t be Roldugin. Despite the inconsistencies, bank employees violated their duty of care,” writes Der Bund.
The court pointed to a host of ‘warning signals’, including the general political situation in Russia and media reports of Roldugin, who, for example, said in an interview that he was ‘not a millionaire’ , wrote the newspaper. According to the judge, the bank’s business relationship with Roldugin was to be terminated no later than the next six months, no later than November 2015, but it lasted about a year.
“According to the prosecutor’s office, it is common knowledge that Putin only officially declares small assets and low incomes, while his real assets are managed by whistleblowers,” writes Der Bund.
Former criminal law professor and expert on money laundering law, Mark Peat, commenting on the court’s decision, said it indicated the possibility of prosecution “even the closest associates of the President of Russia” .
According to him, until relatively recently, the country’s authorities struggled to “deal with the banks, trustees and lawyers who deal with sensitive assets”. However, Pete pointed out, the situation has changed recently.
The expert noted that this required innovations in the Swiss legal system, in particular “to declare negligent money laundering illegal, but the obstacles for this were too high”. “This is for cases like cellist Roldugin’s, where the bankers clearly failed to do their due diligence,” Pete explained.
The decision of the Zurich District Court has not yet entered into force and can be appealed to a higher court. Lawyers for the bank employees filed an appeal while still in the courtroom.