Fictitious trade deals with phony invoices purporting to show transactions in everything from metal products to bulk food orders have been used to launder billions of dollars on behalf of Russian oligarchs and their organized crime associates, according to an investigation by the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Known as the “Troika Laundromat”, the scheme relied on “counterparties” in the form of prominent financial institutions to the transactions. OCCRP lists among them Citigroup Inc., Raiffeisen, and Deutsche Bank.
According to OCCRP, “the dozens of companies in the system also generated $8.8 billion of internal transactions to obscure the origin of the cash.”