
The Troika Laundromat - jumelles
https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/
======
solidsnack9000
_Some of the money that Roldugin’s companies received from the Laundromat
originated in a massive Russian tax fraud exposed by Sergei Magnitsky, a
Russian lawyer who died in jail after revealing it._

[https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/vast-offshore-
netw...](https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/vast-offshore-network-
moved-billions-with-help-from-major-russian-bank)

Pretty amazing how people show up to fight and get themselves killed on
principle in situations like this.

~~~
credit_guy
This led to the Magnitsky Act [1], where the U.S. slapped heavy sanctions on a
number of Russian individuals believed to have been implicated in his death.
This hurt Russia so much that they retaliated in a number of ways, one of
which is the topic of investigations of a prosecutor whose name is Mueller...

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act)

~~~
akhilcacharya
..and this is what the "adoptions" talk was a euphemism for during the Trump
Tower meeting

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act#Ban_on_U.S._adop...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act#Ban_on_U.S._adoption_of_Russian_children)

------
nikanj
We constantly hear the Russian economy is in shambles, but at the same time
the whole planet seems flush with shady Russian cash.

I’m honestly confused by the real status of their economy.

~~~
ggm
An economy of scale has value measured in trillions. A trillion is 1000
billion. If I succeed in stealing 0.01% of something in trillions, I have x
times 100 millions.

I think we can assume that inside this economy, theft significantly north of
0.01% is taking place. For reference my partner ran a small independent
bookshop and she worked on 1% theft of stock as a rough model. For "theft"
read "oh I dropped it in a puddle, the book is now filthy and unsellable, I
shall keep it and use it for .. nevermind"

Tax compliance in Greece was figured at below 50%. Tax -avoidance- [edit:
wrong. evasion] (not tax minimisation) is theft from the state. If a modern
western economy inside the EU has less than 50% compliance on tax, what do you
think the post SU states have?

What is the value of an illegally exported tank? Barrel of oil? A Tonne of
industrial diamonds? Cobalt? If you lived in an economy which was so
physically large most of its visible ocean borders were probably un visited
99% of the time, and you had a megatonne of industrial diamonds.. what would
you do?

~~~
robocat
> Tax avoidance (not tax minimisation) is theft from the state.

Tax avoidance is OK. It's tax evasion that's illegal.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance)

~~~
ggm
Sigh. Sorry. fixed. Wish we had -markdown- for corrections.

------
SpaceRaccoon
I suspect that Western authorities tolerate this because it brings billions of
dollars into their economies.

~~~
radicaldreamer
The British definitely do, it’s part of their “second empire.” Almost every
overseas possession is now a haven (from BVI, the Caymans, to independent
states like the UAE and Singapore).

~~~
dandare
Meanwhile, the London real estate prices increased 5-10 fold between 1995 and
2015. Coincidence?

[https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-
index](https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/uk-house-price-index)

------
elmo2you
1\. It is great this this information is published. People should know about
these crimes. I sincerely hope that all involved with rot in jail (or worse,
for all I care). It would be even better if it also would drop the curtain on
the people who (so far) remained out of view in all this.

2\. What is absent (surprisingly, if you're naive), both in this publication
and in general regarding the topic, is the relationship between Russian
oligarchs, their rise to power after the collapse of the USSR, and the
assistance they got from mostly foreign/US "advisers", "investors" and
"businessmen". All of which were eager to at least make as much profit from
the chaos, and probably had full blessing of the US government to corrupt
Russia as much as they could.

3\. Somehow, the foreign individuals who played key roles in creating the
Russian "reality" as it exists today, just happen to (mostly) stay out of view
in every publication. That some of these individuals are themselves under
investigation in Russia, some of which lost much of their "gains" made in
Russia, and now some of the most vocal driving factors behind the current
anti-Russia rhetoric/hysteria in the USA, can of course be all just
coincidence.

4\. Looking at the list of supporting organizations on the OCCRP's web site,
it would be rather extraordinary if this publication does not have a political
bias, since many of these supporters have rather blatantly open political
agendas (with some of them at least being suspect of being criminal
organizations in their own right).

5\. What if this publication is first and foremost a political chess move, in
a large scale turf war between competing criminal organizations? All of which
are effectively outside the reach of legal scrutiny. I do not claim that this
is the case, but it might be worth considering.

~~~
mrleiter
>4\. Looking at the list of supporting organizations on the OCCRP's web site,
it would be rather extraordinary if this publication does not have a political
bias, since many of these supporters have rather blatantly open political
agendas (with some of them at least being suspect of being criminal
organizations in their own right).

What are the blatantly open political agendas of those supporters? I'm asking
seriously. All seem to be about human rights and civic societies and so forth.

~~~
dpwm
Well, US Agency for International Development is one of them.

Whilst I have no doubt it has done some good stuff, it's also been directly
involved in funding attempts at regime change. This usually done under the
guise of promoting democracy – often in places that were once US puppet-
states.

It's interesting that the US speaks of promoting democracy, when it is
fiercely supportive of some of the least democratic states.

If USAID's plans would be so widely supported by the US taxpayer, words like
"discreetly" [0] should not need to be used.

[0] [https://www.scribd.com/document/122217408/USAID-DAI-
Contract](https://www.scribd.com/document/122217408/USAID-DAI-Contract)

~~~
mrleiter
Thanks! Very interesting document.

------
crushcrashcrush
This is an absolutely incredible read.

Guess sanctions only impact the poor...

~~~
option
they only help “strongmen” leaders become even more popular among their
populations because of an “external” enemy.

------
TheAlchemist
I highly recommend Bill Browder book on this topic - "Red Notice: How I Became
Putin's No. 1 Enemy".

It's an awesome read - and very interesting. It's written by the guy who used
to run the biggest investment fund in Russia and was quite an activist. Later,
he and his lawyers uncovered a massive tax fraud scheme, involving a lot of
important people - he became number 1 enemy there. One of the lawyers -
Magnitsky, got imprisoned for several month, then beaten to death there. He
(Browder) now spend his time trying to uncover more of the abuses in Russia
(the recent wave of investigation into European banks is one of the fruits of
his work).

The book is mind boggling.

~~~
cbzbc
He was an activist in the 'investor activist' sense when he was running the
fund.

------
bane
I take it the dataset isn't available anywhere for download?

~~~
matt4077
They have _some_ data available at
[https://data.occrp.org](https://data.occrp.org).

As far as I can tell, the data for this investigation is not (yet?)
accessible. [https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/about-the-
data](https://www.occrp.org/en/troikalaundromat/about-the-data) has some
information about it, and includes an address to contact for journalists who
want to gain access.

The leaked info seems to consist of bank statements. It's unlikely that any
bank conducts illegal transactions only, so it is understandable that they
cannot release the data to the public without harming lots of legitimate
customers.

~~~
r3bl
Disclosure: I've used to work for OCCRP.

That's a platform designed for journalists that indeed contains a lot of
scraped data and leaks. It cross-references them, so you can type in a name of
the person/company and see the data points mentioning them. Some of the
investigations got started precisely because journalists were able to use it
to see a connection you can't see otherwise. It handles all the quirkiness
that arises from dealing with different alphabets, and it accounts for
multiple ways you could type a name from a different alphabet into Latin.

The administrators of it manage who gets to see which data sets for obvious
reasons. Knowing nothing about this specific investigation, I assume that the
data is currently only accessible to the pre-approved journalists (that work
on this investigation).

The code of the tool is available on GitHub, and if you happen to stumble upon
a security issue: [https://www.occrp.org/en/responsible-
disclosure](https://www.occrp.org/en/responsible-disclosure)

------
tempodox
I think it's somewhat telling that the thing I imagine being laundered when I
hear or see the word Laundromat, is money.

------
jvln
After panama papers I realized that money are moved using fax machines. It
seems to start moving money you need to know company name and its
representetive. Having this info sending a fax stating move money from A to B
is sufficient. I assume huge amounts can be or are stolen from ofshore
companies.

------
andrepd
Absolutely enthralling so far. A must read for everyone.

------
DyslexicAtheist
posted this already yesterday, identical URL and title. I don't understand why
my submission got demoted and this one is at the front
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19309329)

~~~
mojuba
Timing and luck. It is more important though that a good link eventually gets
the exposure it deserves.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
no that's fine, the goal is to have it seen and see what people think.

but it seems my understanding of how links get promoted is incorrect. When
submitting links that have been shared hours/days (or sometimes weeks) before,
then the submit usually takes me straight to the page of the original poster.
It seems that there is a limit of how many links can be on the frontpage by a
given user or something (but that too doesn't seem right considering that in
Dec I had 4 links on the FP top 30 on the same day).

For long time I thought I understood this site but now it's clear to me I know
nothing :)

~~~
mojuba
No wait, those aren't the same URLs actually if you look at them. So that
explains it ;)

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
hmm, but they are the same:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=occrp.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=occrp.org)

------
deniscepko2
I think Western countries should make a favor and not punish any of that and
even encourage Russian money flowing away from Russia. At some point Russian
people have to stand up for themselves. This Oligarch situation is so bad its
upsetting

~~~
bolzano
What do you think ordinary Russians will/should think of the West if it does
this? Do you think it will encourage them to vote for a pro western liberal
democrat? or an authoritarian strongman?

What would you think if Russia did this to your country? Supported the
oligarchs in your country... to make you see the error of your ways?

~~~
deniscepko2
I dont think its about voting. The whole system is corrupt there due to the
people who have power. And if west lets them legally spend their money its
going to be transparent to the people in Russia. Which might push them towards
some action.

Btw west itself is not Liberal Democrat. Checkout Russian Liberal democrat
Vladimir Zhirinovsky you'll see how different Russia is from West. I feel like
you expect a western solution to a Russian problem. Im dont expect everyone
agree with me, but to me it seems like this problem needs some extreme (not
normal) approach

~~~
bolzano
I definitely don't want a "western" solution to a Russian problem... my point
was that's pretty much what you're advocating.

The west has a terrible history of implementing these kind of self defeating,
counter productive Strongman strengthening policies (e.g. Putin is largely
result of the west supporting with Yeltsin), which is what I think would
happen if you were to "teach the people a lesson" which if I'm not reading you
wrong, seems to me, what you are suggesting.

Also, the question stands, what do you think the effect of your suggestion on
the average Russian? Do you think they will see things your way, or will they
(in some sense rightly) see this as patronising interference. How would a
western person see it if Russia were to do this to their country?

------
mrhappyunhappy
It’s interesting that the fraud and laundered money is always blamed on the
bad guy when in fact it should be the banking system that is held accountable.
If you take large sums of money with a deposit description “for bills” without
doing anything about it, well, sorry to say but you’ve failed to do your part
in ensuring that money is not dirty. Banks are incentivized to look the other
way and when they do get busted, nobody goes to jail, they pay a small fine
considering the large picture and go on business as usual - see HSBC

~~~
jstanley
I completely disagree.

It's correct to blame crimes on the bad guys. Theft and fraud are actual
crimes with actual victims. Money laundering is a non-crime, and the rest of
us shouldn't have to suffer an authoritarian financial system just because
some people commit crimes.

Banks should provide a dumb service like phone companies do. It wouldn't be
reasonable for the phone company to interrogate you about why you're making so
many late-night phonecalls, and it's not reasonable for the bank to
interrogate you about why you're depositing so much legal tender.

~~~
shkkmo
Money laundering is fraud. Most of the transactions involved companies created
and owned by the Troika Dialog. This money laundering directly enabled a
number of very harmful and illegal activities.

While I can understand valuing and protecting financial privacy, I fail to see
how you can see Troika Dialog as blameless here.

In general, financial privacy must be balanced against financial transparency
and enforcement. Tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and other financial crimes
come with significant costs to society.

~~~
baybal2
If it really should, opening a bank should not be easier than opening a bank
account. In, I think, half of Western world, banking licenses are issued with
no questions asked aside basic formalities.

You can't justify at all how anal are the banking regulations towards
individuals, when bank owners are allowed an effective anonymity and life free
of state intrusion.

Today's AML mass hysteria is not much different from the terrorism "security
theatre" – completely ineffectual

