Platon Vyacheslav Nikolaevich last. Plato blamed everyone

09/11/2016 Opinions

In the new documentary “Komisarul”, journalist Gabriel Kalin investigates the activities of the “hero” Vyacheslav Platon, called in the press “Raider No. 1 in the CIS”.

The journalist begins his investigation with brief biographical information about the man who shook the entire banking system of the Republic of Moldova to its foundations.

Platon Vyacheslav Nikolaevich, born in 1973, a native of the city of Causeni, is a defendant in high-profile criminal cases, including the murder of businessman Lapteacru Vasile in 1999. Then our hero came out unscathed and, with the help of raider schemes that involved the creation of artificial debts, became the owner of Lapteacru’s assets. Through dummies, Plato made 2 million 500 thousand dollars - a real fortune for that time. The LAPTEACRU deal, or Oferta Plus, was the beginning of the “activity” of who will become Raider No. 1, notes Gabriel Kaelin.

According to the cited study, a real “rise” of Plato followed, which enriched his criminal biography and increased his authority to the maximum among the most influential people from the “world of dirty money.” In just a few years, the oligarch from Russia, Ukraine and the entire CIS region Platon, nicknamed “Raider No. 1 in the CIS,” was also called a “genius of schemes”

Gabriel Kalin claims that in a private conversation with one of the lawyers who represented him in various administrative and criminal cases, he told him that IN THE SLAVIC HEAD OF PLATO, INSTEAD OF A BRAIN, A HARD DRIVE WITH CIRCUITS. Do you know what he carries in his bag? Two books - the Civil Code and the Criminal Code. As soon as he has a free minute, Plato leafs through the Codes and looks for loopholes in them. Soon you will be able to see for yourself that this person deservedly bears the title of genius.

Criminal cases of Vyacheslav Platon

As reported by the Komisarul program, many criminal cases have been opened against Vyacheslav Platon. Too much for an ordinary mortal. But every time he came out unsullied. “The commissioner has only looked at some of them. These are whole mountains of paper. Just to list them would take us about half a day. And we are talking only about criminal cases. We don't even mention civil lawsuits. To understand the full scale of Plato’s raider attacks, we will list only a few of them: On the territory of the Republic of Moldova, Veaceslav Platon stole almost everything he could using quite complex schemes, to which we will return.

RAIDER ACTIVITIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA: Cristal Flor company - 4,000,000 US dollars, Chisinau trolleybus park - 1,300,000 US dollars; SA Alimentarmaș; RED Nord; Chisinau City Hall; Moldova Hidromaș; SA MoldAsig; SA BC Moldova Agroindbank; SA Insurance company ASITO; BC Victoria Bank SA In most of the above cases, the amount of actual damage was not even accurately established. Without a doubt, we are talking about tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars,” notes the author of the investigation.

In Ukraine, he acted in the same brazen manner. The country is much larger, with greater resources. However, this did not prevent a number of companies from being deprived of their assets.

RAIDER ACTIVITIES IN UKRAINE: BC Raiffazen Bank AVALI - $5.7 million; Energoatom - 123 million hryvnia; Dneproblenergo - 25 million hryvnia; Energorinok - 224.6 million hryvnia; Zaporozhoblenergo - 25 million hryvnia; Dneproblenergo - 25 million hryvnia; Odesoblenergo - 80 million hryvnia; Alchev Metallurgical Plant - 26.3 million hryvnia; Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Plant - 8.2 million hryvnia.

RAIDER ACTIVITIES IN UKRAINE:

“Hero” Vyacheslav Platon did not limit himself to just these attacks, the investigation notes. And the Russian Federation was not saved from the insatiable Plato - a genius of combinations and schemes, raider No. 1 in the CIS. And in Russia he did not hesitate to attack enterprises.

RAIDER ACTIVITIES IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION: Sitis Centr SRL - $2 million; Mehovaya Raduga-45 - $1 million; Concern Silovîe Mașinî - $12 million.

The investigation's author digs deeper to demonstrate the scope of Plato's attacks, providing "interesting details." So, in 2008, in the office of Moldprotectplant, on Bucuresti Street, 67, the office that belonged to him, law enforcement officers conducted searches, as a result of which dozens of seals of various enterprises and institutions of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, seals of dozens of offshore companies were found, who participated in raider attacks, blank sheets of A4 paper, with the signature and seal of senior officials of various government agencies, including judges. Law enforcement agencies then entered Plato's lair - the operation, however, was not completed. Plato then came out unscathed. You understand that an ordinary law student expelled from his second year would not be able to pull off all these combinations on his own.

According to the investigation, back in the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR, Plato was already under the patronage of influential people. Then the great division of assets hanging in the air began. There were many generals in the Secret Services of the Soviet Union who wanted to appropriate these assets. Their influence in the countries of the former USSR has not been canceled. Moreover, most of them received new positions - some in the Russian Federation, others in the former Soviet republics.

Even if they had the right connections and the necessary information, they could not act personally. Therefore, they attracted young professionals who became agents and started working. A young man from the Republic of Moldova, since his student days, had established himself as a capable worker, his criminal abilities and skills as a forger attracted the attention of those involved in recruitment. It is not for nothing that, without any education, in 1994, at the age of only 21, he became vice-chairman of the administrative board of Moldindconbank. It is “Moldindconbank” that will point us to the true patrons of Plato.

Oleg Podolko, born on July 31, 1949 in the city of Izyaslav, Khmelnitsky region, at that time located on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. His first job was as a laboratory assistant at the Leningrad Mining Research Institute. Graduated from the Faculty of Engineering and Economics of the Polytechnic Institute. Sergei Lazo, Chisinau (currently the Technical University of Moldova). Later he became involved in politics - he entered the Higher Party School of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow, writes timpul.md with reference to Deschide.md. From the very first years of his political activity, Podolko was recruited by the Russian special services. He served as chairman of Stroyprombank of the Moldavian SSR (in 1991, transformed into Moldovaindkombank and later into Moldinkonbank).

It was he who appointed Veaceslav Platon to the position at Moldindconbank. Soon Podolko was sent for the second time on a diplomatic mission to Cuba, which would end in 2005 with the implementation of a new agreement, according to which Russia provided Cuba with $335 million. For those not in the know, Russia has been subsidizing Cuba for decades, the cited source notes. In exchange for Cuban sugar, the Russians supplied oil and weapons. In turn, Cuba supported the communist movement throughout Latin America. This all continued until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Relations were renewed in 2006 when Russia offered Cuba a $355 million loan. One of the masterminds of the agreement was none other than Oleg Podolko, who until 2005 served as the commercial representative of Cuba. Having studied Plato’s biography well, you can see that just at the time when Podolko was in Cuba, Veaceslav Platon started a business with sugar from the Republic of Moldova. To understand why the Russian secret services had their eye on Plato, you need to know that both the KGB and the FSB launched serious recruitment campaigns, studying the habits of young people from their school days. A few major points that Plato went through speak for themselves. The image of Plato is the image of a character with gangster habits. At the age of conscription, he managed to falsify his military ID in order to avoid being drafted into the army.

So, according to the documents possessed by Komisarul, Platon used someone else’s name when he realized that he could be called to account for evading military service. A criminal case was opened on this fact, which never resulted in a conviction. The same documents prove that law student Vyacheslav Platon was expelled from his second year for failing to appear for the winter session. This did not prevent him from taking the position offered to him at Moldoinconbanc by his supervisor Podolko just a year later. Moreover, Plato’s psychological portrait was perfectly suited to completing the tasks proposed by the Russians. Smart and fearless guy, willing to do anything for money - an exceptional agent.

Another interesting document indicates that in 2001, Platon fabricated a fake Soviet passport in the name of one Sawan Nikolai. Using this document, he managed to obtain an identity card in the same name. And in this case a criminal case was opened. Plato again managed to escape punishment. The experience of using a fake passport in his youth helped him obtain Ukrainian citizenship, which Ukraine does not recognize, and which his lawyers are citing now that he is detained. Most likely, the Ukrainian passport was obtained according to the same scheme, especially since this time it is supported by curators from the FSB.

I think that most Moldovans know the expression CUBAN BAG. So, these big bags were actually bags of sugar brought from Cuba. One of the responsible persons who oversaw the Cuban sugar business was Oleg Podolko, a curator from the FSB, who enlightened Vyacheslav Platon on issues of banking and sugar business.

At a certain point, Podolko was appointed first deputy general director of Roszagransobstvennosti under the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, according to one of the reports of the ITAR-TASS agency. In other words, a deputy directorate in charge of ALL REAL ESTATE AND PROPERTY of the Russian Federation throughout the world. Now do you understand how Plato found out which ex-Soviet enterprises he could make property claims against and how he did it? - asks the author of the investigation.

Having access to the entire database of Soviet enterprises remaining in the CIS, Podolko provides them to Plato, and the genius of criminal schemes, knowing the weak points, developed a theft scheme for each enterprise separately. No wonder he got away with it every time, including the murder of Lapteacru, a case that even Cuban sugar cannot sweeten. By the way, the same Cuban sugar was present in the cases.

The protection of the FBS made this guy from Causeni unattainable, notes journalist Gabriel Calin. All these blows of fate became a school for Plato, who, as a result, received the best recommendations. It is not for nothing that he was selected as the executor of the schemes called Laundromatul - a transaction of 20 billion dollars from Russia through Moldova. This big deal for Plato was the climax of his career. But we are interested in our money.

Then it gets even more interesting. After the successful implementation of the Laundromatul scheme, Plato did not calm down. At the direction of the Moscow bosses, he prepared a new blow to destroy the banking system of the Republic of Moldova.

Destabilization of pro-European Moldova was the main thing for the Russians. Plato was again selected by Podolko as a performer, especially since he knew well how everything worked and had the necessary connections for this. A key role in this whole matter was played by Vlad Filat, to whom Plato entrusted the scheme of the raider attack and showed him all the steps that he should take. The guarantees that played a decisive role for Filat were negotiations with FSB General Podolko, who, on Filat’s instructions, was appointed honorary consul of the Republic of Moldova in Sochi. Under the cover of the FSB, the European Filat convinces Ilan Shor to join the game, promising him the Airport in return. Ilan Shor agrees and implements step by step the entire scheme, thought out by people from the FSB in the Republic of Moldova. It is not for nothing that at the end of 2014, at the time of the biggest blow to the banking system of Moldova, four FSB generals were accommodated in the Cosmos Hotel, but we will return to this information, as well as to the names of these generals and their connections, notes Komisarul.

Knowing that sooner or later everything will come out, Filat uses a whole army of Russian agents. “Comisarul” provides a whole chain of interesting connections of some public figures from the Republic of Moldova. Podolko is a party colleague, friend and partner of Ion Timofeevich Gutu and Constantin Ursachi. Gutsu is a Soviet nomenclature official who was deputy minister and minister of economics. This character, in addition to being one of Plato’s patrons, is also Natalia Morar’s uncle.

Konstantin Ursachi, also a Soviet nomenclature official, is the father of Vyacheslav Platon's lawyer, Anna Ursachi. She herself describes her father in the most communist colors: “My father held a very high position in the state. At that time, in 1970-1985, the real Communist Party was in power. My father was the engine of the state system for me. Having a father involved in politics, I was a politically literate child. I admired him when he wrote his reports for the plenum of the CPSU. From him I learned to believe in myself. He called me Anna Konstantinovna, even when I was three years old.”

Another interesting character in Platon’s entourage is Renato Usatii, who seems to be under the patronage of the same people from the FSB, since Usatii’s meeting with Sergei Aksenov, the governor of Crimea annexed by the Russians, was organized by the same Podolko, who, meanwhile, became the official representative of the administration President Putin on the peninsula. It should not be forgotten that Usatii admitted that he spoke with Plato on the same day that the latter was detained. The question arises: was it not through the same connections that Filat appointed him as an adviser? Another question is how, at the end of 2014, Usatii knew about the so-called “theft of the century”, or “theft of a billion”, if not from the authors of this theft themselves.

In addition to patrons and colleagues, Plato managed to create his own network of subordinates. Most of them are former fellow students who took part in all the raider attacks organized by the great schemer. Former classmates administer his companies. Plato introduced others directly into government structures. Here you can name the king of cashing Hoffman, or the brother of Hoffman’s boss, Mikhail Sagaidak. The list can be supplemented with a number of names of judges, prosecutors, as well as Moldovan deputies, including chairmen of parliamentary commissions. But we will return to them later, notes Komisarul.

To understand how cynical Plato is and the entire KGB that stands behind him, it must be said that Plato initiated the procedure for registering an initiative group to collect signatures and registering him as a candidate for the post of President of the Republic of Moldova. Can you imagine what will happen to this country if the hero of Natalia Morar and Anna Ursachi wins the elections?, the authors of the investigation ask themselves.

Now you understand why Vyacheslav Platon is presented to us as a great hero by some of the above-mentioned personalities. You understand why the clan’s pocket press is trying to present him and his people to us as bearers of the truth. FSB truth? Don't miss the next issue of Komisarul. In the meantime, don’t forget to ask Natasha: Where is the billion? - says Gabriel Kaelin in conclusion.

On June 25, Moldovan citizen Vyacheslav Platon was detained in Kyiv. At the time of his arrest, Platon and several other people were hastily packing documents in his office, located in the center of Kyiv. He was found with a fake passport in the name of Ukrainian citizen Vyacheslav Kobalev, but with a photograph of Vyacheslav Platon.

According to the report of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, the detention took place with the aim of arresting and further extraditing Platon to Moldova to face criminal charges under Art. 190 (fraud) and art. 243 (money laundering) of the Moldovan Criminal Code.

It became known that Russian law enforcement officers also expressed their interest in getting their hands on the businessman. According to the Russian side, Platon came to their attention in connection with the so-called “Moldovan scheme” for withdrawing tens of billions of dollars from Russia.
Perhaps Hollywood directors will someday make a film about Vyacheslav Platon - and it will be worth it. Rarely does the life of a simple businessman become so eventful and scandalous.
But is Plato really just a businessman? Even a very superficial glance at his biography and the whole trail of scandals accompanying it shows that he can be called a businessman very conditionally. His business interests are too specific.

Despite his rather young age - Plato is just over forty years old, he has been in serious conflict with the law from time to time for at least ten years. The scope of his interests is very broad: insurance companies, banks, industrial enterprises. And the geography of the countries in which it operates is also wide: Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia.

The only thing that unites all the projects in which Plato participates is money. Very big money.

Start

Vyacheslav Platon has been playing serious games since about the beginning of the 2000s, and his first major mistake, which became public knowledge, happened in 2005. That year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moldova discovered a workshop for the production of counterfeit US dollars. In the underground printing house, among other things, they also found finished products, approximately 2 million counterfeits ready to be put into circulation. It was then that Platon first came under the Interpol wanted list on charges of manufacturing and putting into circulation counterfeit money.

However, the charge against Plato was later dropped. This, by the way, happened more than once in the future: Whenever the sword of justice hung over him, Plato managed to escape from under its blow.

Raider number one

Raider number one - this is the nickname given to Plato by journalists who studied his fascinating life. And, indeed, reading about the life of this “businessman”, one might think that this is a description of the history of some pirate who lived three hundred years ago. At least the terms are similar to pirate ones - taking over businesses, gaining control of banks, illegal transactions.

The raider’s “track record” includes dozens of large enterprises that either wholly or partially ended up in the ownership of Plato, and for some ridiculous amounts of money, if we talk about what was officially shown. And, we must give Plato his due: unlike real pirates, he did not put a gun to the victim’s head in order to get the desired shares. It turned out to be much more effective to cleverly use loopholes in the law - plus an extensive toolkit of false documents, stamps, shell companies, offshore accounts, fictitious contracts and fake financial obligations.

Among the raider takeovers mentioned in the press, carried out by Plato in different countries, we can list OJSC Moldavgidromash, OJSC Power Machines, OJSC Cites Center, the company “Fur Rainbow 45”, the hotel “Sport”, the joint venture “Crystal-flor” . In Moldova, he managed to capture several of the largest banks and insurance companies.

The story of NNEGC Energoatom occupies a special place, standing out sharply against the background of “ordinary” raider takeovers. This giant nuclear corporation of Ukraine was virtually ruined through the efforts of Plato and his companions. With the help of his offshore company Remington Worldwide Ltd, and of course his traditional small forgeries and fraudulent contracts, Energatom was just one step away from becoming the property of a native of Molova. The plan failed, but the price that Ukraine had to pay for not giving Energoatom into the hands of Plato was very high. As a result of the struggle for the property of the Ukrainian nuclear monopoly, with the participation of Russian courts and Irish offshore companies, Energoatom's losses amounted to more than 100 million hryvnia, and the work of the enterprise was paralyzed for several years.

Career peak

But even these achievements of “raider number one” pale in comparison to the main peak in his career: pumping money from Russia to offshore companies. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars. The first trial pumping began back in 2007. Even the famous “Magnitsky Affair”, when $230 million was siphoned from the Russian budget - a huge amount that, after going a long way, including through Moldovan banks, was eventually transformed into real estate in New York, looks like a trifle compared to Plato’s activities. His team, Plato, created a real mega-laundromat for the withdrawal and laundering of money, through which more than 20 billion dollars were funneled in 2010-2013 alone.

The scheme was extremely simple. A Russian company, wanting to withdraw money to Europe, signed up as a third-party guarantor under a commercial contract between two economic agents, whose roles were played by shell companies. After the deal fell through, the company that “suffered losses” demanded, through a Moldovan court, the fulfillment of guarantee obligations from the Russian company. Thus, thanks to the court decision, money from Russia first went to Moldova, then to a bank in Latvia, and from there completely “clean money” could be transferred to any other country - at the request of the customer.

An important role in this laundering was played by the Moldovan Moldindconbank, in which Plato served as vice president. In 2013 alone, over 80 percent of foreign exchange receipts in Moldova and 63 percent of the volume of foreign currency withdrawn passed through this not the largest bank in Moldova.

About the FSB-OCG connection

And here the question arises: could Vyacheslav Platon, even if he was a talented financier, have carried out such complex operations? And most importantly, would courts, notaries and banks cooperate with him, moreover, in several countries at once? Definitely, without the patronage of local elites, this is almost impossible. But how did Plato manage to gain the favor of the authorities of Moldova and Ukraine?

The answer lies in knowing how the Russian power system works. Even in the late USSR, all serious financial transactions outside the country were in charge of the KGB. This practice of using special services to work with money from the highest echelons of power has been preserved in modern Russia. True, now this matter has its own peculiarities. The intelligence services, in particular the FSB and the GRU, although they retained their supervisory role, began to involve criminals in the direct execution of projects.

For example, the famous “Solntsevskaya” organized crime group was put in charge of everything related to Russian Railways. The “Podolsk” organized crime group, which emerged back in the 80s, was largely focused on working with funds allocated by the Russian treasury to three large ministries - the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, as well as the state corporation Rosatom. Working with such colossal financial resources, the Russian criminal under the roof of the FSB needed expansion in the form of attracting foreign banks to their schemes. For this purpose, Alexander Grigoriev, who is responsible for money laundering, chose the Moldovan bank of Vyacheslav Platon.

When the money withdrawal scheme became public, Russian authorities arrested Grigoriev and accused him of laundering $46 billion.

Thus, there is no doubt that Vyacheslav Platon worked in the interests of the FSB-OCG tandem. Hence the fact that every time it seemed that all the facts were against him, he was, one way or another, taken out from under the blow. As for the personalities who provided such cover in Moldova and Ukraine, their level was as high as possible: in Ukraine, Plato’s activities were covered by Viktor Yanukovych, in Moldova by ex-Prime Minister Vlad Filat. Of course, this was not about personal love for Plato, and not even about direct bribery. Relations with Plato’s Russian curators and dependence on them were very complex and multifaceted - but these are two separate stories.

Plato thanked the patrons

Of course, Vyacheslav Plato himself, in exchange for the right to further cooperation, had to demonstrate - and demonstrated - complete loyalty to the Russian leadership. The price for invulnerability was participation in various kinds of shadow and semi-shadow projects of the Kremlin, which Russia could not finance directly for one reason or another. Among the latest such projects is financial assistance to Donbass separatists: transfer of funds to pay for “volunteers”, to encourage the leadership of separatist enclaves, to purchase medicines and food for the warring parts of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR.

Documents confirming Plato’s financing of Donbass militants have not yet entered the public space, but, according to informed sources, this moment is not far off. Platon’s case promises many more sharp turns, and the joint actions of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and Moldova give hope that this time “raider number 1” will not be able to jump off and go into the shadows as usual. And he, saving himself, will tell his partners and patrons in different countries about a lot of interesting things. This will be a very interesting story...

ANDREY MIKHAILENKO, especially for Gulyai Polya

Having remained in the shadows for a long time, and only occasionally appearing in news feeds, Vyacheslav Platon, this time found himself in the spotlight of international media

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And not surprisingly, several countries would like to get hold of the “raider number one” detained at the end of June in Ukraine for interrogation - Moldova, Russia, the USA, the site reports

What is the reason for such increased interest in this, as he calls himself “a simple banking consultant”? In order to understand this, you need to consider the person of Vyacheslav Plato himself. Unfortunately, while studying his history, we did not find a single mention of him in a positive way, so the portrait turns out to be somewhat gloomy. What can you do - you can’t paint a white swan with black paints.

We will present individual episodes from the life of Platon-Kobalev, and readers themselves will be able to try to put together a complete portrait from these individual strokes.

How Plato judges judges

At first glance, it is surprising that with so many shady deeds, many of which can be found in open sources, Vyacheslav Platon managed to avoid punishment. Almost all criminal cases against him were sooner or later closed. The secret here is simple.

The way he deals with disobedient judges is very clearly shown by the story of Judge Klim, which occurred in 2013.

It all started with the fact that Judge Nikolai Klima did not support the demand of one Ukrainian company (backed by Platon) to withdraw 24 million lei from the account of the Chisinau City Hall, which at the exchange rate on that day was almost 2 million dollars.

Attempts to solve the problem through a traditional bribe did not work, either the judge was honest, or the case was so complicated, and the judge was afraid that this might come back to haunt him, but it is important that in the end the company affiliated with Plato did not receive the money.

Since it was not possible to obtain the necessary court decision with the help of money, Plato had in his arsenal a lot of other ways to force the judge to make a decision “correctly”. And then, in the spring of 2013, in Chisinau, huge advertising panels appeared at several key intersections, on which, against a scattering of dollar bills, two judges were depicted, one of whom was Nikolai Klima, and all this was accompanied by the inscription - “The most corrupt judges in Moldova".

Naturally, such an incident could not but have consequences. A serious scandal arose in the media, and the mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca, directly pointed to “raider number one” Veaceslav Platon as the initiator of the installation of these panels.

The events developed as follows - on May 15, at approximately 23:30, the judge’s car hit a pedestrian and fled the scene of the accident, and the witnesses who were driving behind him recorded everything on a video recorder and then contacted the police. Inspectorate employees arrived at the judge’s home and found his car in the parking lot in the yard with signs of damage, and the judge himself was intoxicated.

The end of his career, and perhaps his free life, clearly loomed before the judge. But that was not the end of the story. The fact is that those who came up with this diabolical plan did not take one thing into account. They calculated everything, found out when the judge would be home in a drunken state, found a car of the same color, made the same license plates, hit a pedestrian and filmed everything on video, sent a young man with a bat who dented the judge’s car in the parking lot. They didn’t take into account only one thing: the judge’s neighbor installed a video camera to monitor his car, Klim’s car was also captured in the frame, and all that ill-fated day it remained in the parking lot, including the moment when they used a bat to make traces of a “collision” with a pedestrian. .

This accidental video saved the judge's career and reputation. The Prosecutor General's Office, at the request of the head of the Supreme Court of Justice, opened a criminal case of intimidation of a judge and putting pressure on him in connection with his professional activities.

Later they were detained, the role of the driver of the fictitious car was played by a lawyer, the “victim” of the collision was portrayed by an officer of the special forces “Fulger”, and the “witness” of the collision was the senior inspector of the criminal police of the Riscani district. And only the person who invented this operation remained behind the scenes and escaped any punishment.

How to steal a bank

While some bandits are thinking about how to rob a bank in order to get rich quickly and once, others are thinking about how to steal the bank itself and regularly receive income from it. Of course, banks are not stolen from buildings or vaults, banks are stolen from shares. This happened with the largest Moldovan bank, Moldova Agroindbank (MAIB), which, according to experts, occupies approximately 1/4 of the entire banking system of Moldova.

Naturally, such a tidbit cannot go unnoticed. Attempts to capture it have been going on for more than a year, and the capture was carried out in several waves. Interestingly, Vyacheslav Platon himself, responding to accusations of raider attacks, replied that this was just a “normal corporate conflict.”

MAIB raiders have attacked before, but the largest operation was carried out by Plato in 2011. Then, as a result of his actions, Factor Banka (Slovenia), Venture Holding (Holland), Adriatic Fund (Holland), Druga d.o.o and Logar Milena, who were among the founders back in the mid-2000s, lost their shares.

The scheme was, like everything that Plato does, wise and thoughtful, but at the same time, as is typical for this creative person, it had some shortcomings. It looked like this: the MAIB shareholder companies had some debts to third parties. In fact, whether there were actually debts and, if there were, whether they corresponded to the declared amounts, was never established, however, on the basis of these allegedly existing debts, an arbitrator from the city of St. Petersburg (Russia) makes a decision to confiscate the shares of foreign investors in benefit the creditor company.

Next, in order to legalize this transaction and give it legal force in Moldova, a judge from the Bendery Appeals Chamber, located in Causeni (Moldova), joins the case, who considers the claim and confirms the decision of the Russian judge. It is interesting that this judge, in principle, did not have the right to consider such a case, since it falls within the competence of the Economic Court of Appeal.

As a result, the shares of Moldova Agroindbank came into the possession of several new shareholders.

But the seemingly well-thought-out and flawless operation unexpectedly encountered resistance from the National Bank of Moldova. The National Bank blocked blocks of shares belonging to shareholders - owners of a share of 39.58%. It is interesting that the reason for blocking the shares was not the questionable methods of obtaining them, but the fact that the NBM saw consistency in the activities of the new shareholders, indicating that there is one person behind them, which contradicts the legislation of Moldova, which prohibits ownership of a stake of more than 5% without permission National Bank.

As a result, the National Commission on Financial Markets decided to cancel the right to these shares and sell the shares belonging to 19 owners and amounting to 39.58% of the bank's capital.

The shares were put up for auction, although so far it has become known (unofficially) the name of the only investor who wished to purchase them, he was 21-year-old Yegor Platon, the son of “raider number one”. As Vyacheslav Platon himself explained in one of his interviews, his son considered MAIB attractive for investment, so he gave him the amount necessary for this.

In turn, Yegor Platon indicated in the documents that he would use $40 million received from his father as a gift to purchase shares in the bank. The publication Rise, conducting a study, came to the conclusion that the funds received as a gift from Plato the Younger from Plato the Elder “went through a complex money laundering scheme. Previously, the same scheme was used for the secret transfer of $20 billion from Russia to the European Union through a number of Moldovan banks , in which Plato appeared as a shareholder."

The likelihood that the National Bank of Moldova will approve the purchase of a large stake in a strategically important bank for Moldova by such a dubious shareholder is extremely low. But this does not mean at all that Raider number one, if free again, will abandon his attempts and will not find new moves to attack Moldavian banks and Moldova Agroindbank in particular.

Basked on a peaceful atom

The financial genius of Vyacheslav Platon helps him force not only banks to work for himself, but also seemingly enterprises that were not initially intended to make a profit for individuals, especially those with foreign citizenship.

The history of profit at the expense of the Ukrainian nuclear monopolist stretches back to 1999. It was in 1999 that a small company, VVD LLC, through the mediation of a citizen of Moldova, Belopolsky O.B. began to cooperate with Energatom. And although VVD was a small and unknown company, its owners were hidden, since the official owner of the company was the offshore company Gentwin Systems. In itself, having an offshore company as an owner is not a crime, although perhaps the management of Energatom should think about why their future partner has hidden the real owners.

The deal that VVD offered to the nuclear giant was, at first glance, mutually beneficial and completely legal. According to the concluded contract, the company supplied low-pressure rotors (LPR) for turbines, and did not even ask for money for this, but only received rights to the debts of Moldovan consumers. That is, it could collect money from economic agents of Moldova who had debts to the Ukrainian side.

The first inexplicable detail in this matter is the replacement of the barter form of payment with a monetary one. How this became possible and at what stage of signing the contract the substitution took place, especially without the consent of the management of Energatom, is now impossible to restore, but after that the contract amount became absolutely clear - 18 million US dollars.

The parties to the contract were Energoatom and Gentwin Systems, VVD LLC acted as the official intermediary. The total amount of the transaction increased due to the addition of payment for VVD services and customs duties and reached 98 million hryvnia. About 40 million of this amount were paid according to obligations. But then interesting events began to happen.

In 2002, a comprehensive inspection of the equipment was carried out at the Energatom enterprise, which established that the four RNT supplied by VVD LLC were not new and modern equipment, but were produced about ten years ago and were intended for the Crimean nuclear power plant, which was planned to be built back in Soviet times, in the late 80s, but this idea was abandoned in the early 90s. In subsequent years, giant low-pressure rotors were simply lying around in the open air at the site of the planned construction of a nuclear power plant.

In order to sell this rubbish, Belopolsky, together with his companion Vyacheslav Platon, produced false registration certificates, which contained false information about the year of production and other characteristics.

Based on the results of the inspection, Energatom contacted Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. However, this did not help much, and the VVD company that went to court won the case in 2002 and received a court order to recover 60 million hryvnia from Energatom in its favor. The Kiev Court of Appeal and the Higher Economic Court of Ukraine upheld the decision.

As a result, the VVD company received another 5 million hryvnia. And only after that information surfaced that Gentwin Systems was liquidated back in 2001. Apparently Plato and his companions planned to cover their tracks in this way, but were too hasty. This was followed by a series of proceedings in Ukrainian courts of various levels. The scammers involved new companies, also registered in offshore companies, to which the debt obligations of the already liquidated original company were allegedly transferred.

This continued until an annex to the contract, signed on October 12, 2001, appeared in the case materials, according to which the parties agreed that in the event of any conflict situations, they would be resolved in the court of St. Petersburg. But here the combinators seriously made a mistake, forgetting that the company Gentwin Systems (Ireland), which allegedly signed this annex to the contract as one of the parties, had already been liquidated at that time on 10/12/01.

The story of bringing the Ukrainian nuclear monopoly to bankruptcy dragged on for many years and led to huge losses for the state-owned enterprise. In this case, Plato’s main talent was fully demonstrated - the ability to negotiate with judges and resolve issues in his favor.

Platon - manager of the super laundry

In mid-2014, many media outlets wrote about colossal money laundering from Russia, including from budget funds. There were various estimates ranging from 18 to 46 billion US dollars. The uniqueness of the situation was that almost all of these funds were pumped through Moldovan banks.

Everything was cooked up in the style of “Raider Number One” - false contracts, shell companies, dubious court decisions. In the Russian press, the scheme, in which the technical part was thought out by Plato, was called the “Moldavian scheme”.

The very existence of the criminal scheme became possible after the appointment of Vladimir Yakunin as president of Russian Railways, who soon after taking office appointed Andrei Krapivin as his advisor. In turn, Krapivin lobbied for the appointment of proteges of the Solntsevskaya criminal group - Boris Usherovich and Valery Markelov - to key positions in Russian Railways.

The cashing out and money laundering scheme involved banks controlled by Krapivin, Usherovich and Mareklov - Interprogress, STB, Incredbank, as well as Baltika, actually controlled by the Solntsevskaya organized crime group. However, since 2008, the rules of the game in the Russian banking market have changed, and working through Russian banks has become increasingly dangerous. Then it was decided to involve the foreign banking system. And here two Moldovans came to the occasion, who had long collaborated with the Solntsevskys and guaranteed the provision of a reliable roof in Moldova.

Plato took upon himself the development of the entire laundering and cashing scheme, plus he promised to influence the Moldovan courts to obtain the necessary decisions.

True, the Moldovan side ultimately ruined the entire well-thought-out operation. Vlad Filat, who protected the “Solntsevsk” laundry, seeing what fantastic sums were pumped through Moldova, decided that he, too, could withdraw some money on the sly. It didn't work out a bit. Dealers began to use the established scheme to withdraw, but this time Moldovan money.

Thus, using the same routes and schemes invented by Plato, approximately one billion dollars was stolen from Moldova. And if for Russia the loss of 40 billion, although sensitive, is not fatal, then for small Moldova the theft of 1 billion led to real collapse. Three banks were closed, the leu collapsed and mass protests began in the country, lasting more than a year. The situation was stabilized only by the summer of 2016.

As a result of the case, former Prime Minister of Moldova Vlad Filat ended up in prison. The Prosecutor General's Office found evidence of Vyacheslav Platon's participation in banking scams and he was put on the international wanted list precisely for this reason.

Of course, this is not the complete story of the actions of raider No. 1. Investigators from different countries and journalists continue to investigate the turbulent work history of Vyacheslav Platon. There is no doubt that these investigations, as well as the trial he is due to face soon, will reveal many new pages.

Vyacheslav Platon is accused in his homeland in connection with the withdrawal of $1 billion from the banking system

Vladimir Solovyov, Oleg Rubnikovich

Chisinau intends to seek the extradition of the notorious Moldovan businessman Vyacheslav Platon, who was detained in Kyiv on the evening of July 25. A citizen of Moldova, Ukraine and Russia is accused of financial fraud, including involvement in Moldovan "theft of the century"- withdrawal of an amount equivalent to $1 billion from local banks. According to Kommersant, Russian law enforcement officers are also interested in getting their hands on the businessman: he came to their attention in connection with the so-called Moldovan scheme for withdrawing tens of billions of dollars from Russia .

A citizen of three countries - Moldova, Ukraine and Russia - Vyacheslav Platon was detained in Kyiv by employees of the Security Service and the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine on the evening of July 25. According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, the detention occurred for the purpose of arrest and further extradition to Moldova for prosecution under Art. 190 (fraud) and art. 243 (money laundering) of the Moldovan Criminal Code.

The detention in Kyiv occurred shortly after on the afternoon of July 25 in Chisinau, the head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Moldova, Viorel Morari, announced that the businessman had been put on the international wanted list. According to him, Vyacheslav Platon is accused in the case of unsecured loans received by legal entities controlled by Vyacheslav Platon’s people in Moldovan banks.

According to the investigation, the companies received unsecured loans, which were later repaid using funds from Banca de Economii, one of three Moldovan banks from which an amount equivalent to $1 billion was withdrawn at the end of 2014. This banking scam provoked mass protests in Moldova in 2015 and was called the "theft of the century."

The loans were taken out in 2011 and repaid in November 2014. Prosecutor Morari did not specify which banks the loans were taken from. The money, he said, was then transferred to other countries, in particular to Latvia and the UK.

The head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office noted that the investigation had established a connection between the theft of a billion and the transit of money from Russia through one of the Moldovan banks. He did not specify the name of the bank. Mr. Morari is due to present additional details at a press conference today.

[zdg.md, 07/27/2016, “The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office presented fraud and money laundering schemes in which Plato was involved”: Today, July 27, Viorel Morari, head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, held a press conference on the criminal case in connection with which a request was made for the extradition of Vyacheslav Platon [...].
“The first criminal case was launched on June 21, 2015 in connection with money laundering on a particularly large scale. The second criminal case was launched some time later, on August 18, 2015, in the case of extracting funds from Sberbank JSC by creating a criminal scheme for providing loans to legal entities. The said criminal cases were combined into one case because there is a connection between them and it was necessary for the proper administration of justice. Platon’s extradition was requested on two counts of fraud and money laundering on an especially large scale,” Morari emphasized. [...]
Below are the schemes through which Plato is accused of withdrawing about 1 billion lei from Sberbank.

It is possible that we are talking about a story that Kommersant described in detail in an article published on April 25, 2014. The head of the country's Supreme Court, Mihai Poalelunge, then told Kommersant about dubious schemes identified when checking the decisions of the judicial system of Moldova. [...]

And about. Prosecutor General of Moldova Eduard Kharunzhen told Kommersant yesterday that the Moldovan side intends to promptly prepare all the necessary documents for the extradition of Vyacheslav Platon from Ukraine. If this happens, Vyacheslav Platon will become the second accused in the “theft of the century” case. Since June, a businessman has been held in the pre-trial detention center of the Moldovan National Anti-Corruption Center on similar charges. Ilan Shor, husband of Russian singer Jasmine. It was he who controlled Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Sociala, from which the billion was withdrawn.

Vyacheslav Platon’s defense, however, intends to oppose extradition. His lawyer Vyacheslav Lych, in a comment to Ukrainian media, stated that extradition is impossible due to the fact that his client is a Ukrainian citizen. The Security Service of Ukraine, however, claims that the passport in the name of Vyacheslav Kobalev (the surname of the second wife of Vyacheslav Platon), seized from the detainee, was obtained by him bypassing the procedure for obtaining citizenship. Therefore, extradition will occur.

[: In addition to the illegally obtained passport of a citizen of Ukraine with a different surname, operatives seized from him diplomatic and ordinary passports of the Republic of Moldova, bank cards and more than 500 thousand hryvnia.
SBU officers also established facts that the attacker crossed the state border of Ukraine using also a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation. - Insert K.ru]

According to Kommersant, Russian law enforcement officers are also showing interest in Vyacheslav Platon. A Kommersant source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that in the near future a criminal case may be initiated against him related to the above-described Moldovan money laundering scheme from the Russian Federation under Art. 210 and Art. 159 of the Criminal Code (organization of a criminal community and fraud). In this case, Moscow can claim that Vyacheslav Platon, as a Russian citizen, will be extradited to Russia.

Vyacheslav Platon himself, in his interviews and comments to the media, always denied involvement in the banking business and stated that he was just a lawyer advising various companies, including banks and insurers. Nevertheless, in Moldova, his reputation as the country’s “main raider” strengthened, controlling several large local banks and insurance companies through nominees.

The “main oligarch” of Moldova, Plahotniuc, against the “main raider”

Moldovan banker Platon became another accused in the case of the “theft of the century”

[...] In Moldova, Platon is accused of laundering over 36 million dollars. Observers note that for several years the banker has been in a “state of war” with the country’s main oligarch, Vlad Plahotniuc.

Vyacheslav Platon was put on the international wanted list after a series of searches in three banks in Moldova: Victoriabank, Moldinconbank, Moldova-Agroindbank, the insurance company ASITO, as well as the offices of five companies. All companies are directly or indirectly controlled by Plato.

According to the head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, Viorel Morari, the searches were necessary “to determine the connection of Veaceslav Platon with money laundering through Banca de economii, which, as a result of the theft of a billion dollars, is now in the process of liquidation.

Viorel Morari:“I would like to note an important thing: we have found a connection between a broad investigation into the theft of a billion and the transit of money through one of the banks through court decisions. These actions were planned by one person. The seized documents prove this.”

Morar did not specify the name of the bank. Previously, Moldovan media reported about the transit of tens of billions of dollars from Russia through Moldindconbank.

After a series of searches that took place the day before, two top managers of Moldinconbank were detained. Two more bank employees were questioned. According to the investigation, several legal entities controlled by Plato through intermediaries received unsecured loans, which were later repaid using funds from the Banca de economii.

Viorel Morari:“A group of legal entities that were managed by individuals appointed by this person received unsecured loans from a commercial bank. They were later repaid with other loans received from the Banca de Economii of Moldova. I mean Vyacheslav Platon. However, I would like to remind you of the presumption of innocence.”

Entrepreneurs took out loans from 2011 and repaid them in November 2014. The prosecutor did not specify which banks the loans were taken from. Money from Moldova, according to Viorel Morari, was transferred to other countries, in particular to Latvia and the UK. “According to the charges brought against citizen Platon, we are talking about more than 800 million lei. That is, 138 million lei (about 6 million 300 thousand euros - RFI note), 12 million dollars and more than 5 million euros were taken,” Morari said.

Vyacheslav Platon, meanwhile, denied his involvement in the “theft of the century.” According to him, the decision of the Moldovan prosecutor's office to put him on the international wanted list in connection with cases of fraud in banks is nothing more than an attempt to open a “new political case” on the orders of the coordinator of the ruling coalition, oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, the Moldovan Romanian-language publication Ziarul de Gardă reported.

Platon believed that this was due to information about the theft of a billion, which he provided to law enforcement agencies in different countries, as well as about other lawlessness of Plahotniuc. He also clarified that he agrees to testify, but under certain conditions: if it is a video conference at which the media will be present. [...]

On events around Vyacheslav Platon reacted former Prime Minister of Moldova Ion Sturza on his Facebook page. He called what was happening “Moldovan Armageddon.”

“In the fall of 2014, I spoke publicly so that Messrs. Plahotniuc and Platon would stop the war. A war that, as I stated then, was capable of quickly destroying everything that remained of the state of the Republic of Moldova,” Sturza said.

The politician clarified that he repeatedly and “very persistently” communicated both with the current chairman of parliament, Adrian Candu, calling him “a devoted ally of Plahotniuc,” and by telephone with Veaceslav Platon, but the businessmen continued the war.

“The struggle was for control over financial flows, so as not to say “money laundering from Russia.” There were fabulous sums there. In 2013-2014 about 20 billion dollars. In 2015 (after the scandal at Banca de Economii) about 10 billion more dollars,” writes the former prime minister.

He believes that there will be no winners in this war. “Slava Platon and the company risk losing banking assets in Moldova in the amount of $150–200 million. Do one exercise, write on paper 300,000,000 USD, 200,000,000 USD. Look... If for most people this is an abstract exercise, for them it is life or death,” concluded Sturza. [...]

Robbery of the century in Moldavian style

[...] The weakness of criminals towards Moldovan banks did not arise yesterday. The countdown can be traced back to the mid-2000s - a “troublesome” time for Moldova’s law enforcement agencies, when they were unable to cope with either the increasingly sophisticated methods of money laundering or the gigantic corruption within their own ranks.

In 2011, a secret report from the Moldovan police stated: “Our investigative measures and analytical work indicate that an organized criminal group is operating on the territory of Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, specializing in raider operations against large companies. Between 2005 and 2010, the group, using court orders from these countries, carried out actions that brought it over $100 million.”

(A corporate takeover is a hostile, illegal seizure of control over a company, sometimes with violence, and sometimes with the help of forgery, fraud or improper judicial decisions.)

In a number of cases, the goal of the raiders was to extort a large sum from companies through blackmail. As a rule, “pocket” judges were involved in this, who made rulings in favor of fraudsters who demanded the return of fictitious debt from state commercial structures.

If such a “court” recognized the legitimacy of the debt claim, a “legal” path was opened for the seizure of the enterprise.

The police report details several such cases. But one of them, referred to as criminal case No. 2008030181, like no other, became a catalyst for the avalanche of money laundering that swept the republic in subsequent years.

Lost chance

The most ordinary investigative work was going on until three document boxes were found under one of the office tables, which contained a huge number of seals of companies registered in a variety of offshore companies.

Two of these stamps were relevant to the investigation, but the others did not tell the police anything: Mirabax Limited, Liberton Associates, Felina Investments, Albany Insurance, Caldon Holdings and many other companies, some of which were opened in the US state of Delaware and in the UK.

Some of the stamps belonged to Moldovan companies, one of which, Luminare LTD, was a structure established by Veaceslav Platon, a more than influential person in the political and business circles of Moldova. 42-year-old Platon is a holder of dual citizenship of Russia and Moldova and the sixth person in the ranking of the richest Moldovans. In 2009–2010 he was a member of the republic's parliament.

Plato sits on the management team of at least two Moldovan banks, including Moldindconbank, which has been at the center of multiple money laundering scandals. Platon is often called “the number one raider in Moldova.”

While the amazed Moldovan police were examining boxes full of stamps, their Ukrainian colleagues were conducting their own investigation into a series of raider attacks, including the already mentioned $4 million fraud.

They also managed to discover offshore seals - they were hidden in one of the apartments on the outskirts of Kyiv along with forms of official documents from a number of companies, among which was the British Goldbridge Trading Limited. By 2006, this structure had already become involved in money laundering and fraud against at least one Moldovan company.

The operatives in Kyiv also came across the name of Vyacheslav Platon, but only this time it appeared in the power of attorney issued by the Moldovan Moldindconbank.

One of the investigators who participated in the Chisinau raid in 2008, on condition of anonymity - since he was not authorized to communicate with journalists - said that “in those days, major fraud and raider seizures were carried out through the Moscow-Minsk-Kiev-Chisinau channel.”

And then, in 2008, against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation, something inexplicable happened.

On July 23, when not even two weeks had passed after the Moldovan security forces confiscated the seals and computers, they received an order from above to return everything. A later report stated that because of this, there was not enough time even for the necessary examination of the evidence.

As a result, criminal case No. 2008030181 was shelved and has not been raised since then. The Ukrainian side also never conducted a formal investigation.

These offshore companies and their seals will be used again and again in money laundering schemes. And each time tens and hundreds of millions of dollars will be withdrawn from Russia through Moldova to the European Union.

Neither Moldovan investigators nor their Ukrainian colleagues knew then that they were literally one step away from stopping one of the largest money laundering scams in European history.

Agents and "men from the East"

Two addresses on Brunswick Street in the Scottish capital have repeatedly surfaced in the documents of British companies involved in the November mega-theft, as well as in other, even larger, money laundering scams and corporate raids in eastern Europe.

Brunswick Street is not exactly a wealthy street: inexpensive cars are parked outside identical red brick houses that seem glued to each other. And it’s hard to believe that two such buildings house companies with multibillion-dollar turnover.

This is where “formation agents” live, opening companies at the request of those who want to reliably “stay in the shadows,” as well as “proxies,” or nominee managers, who formally own such structures.

At one of the addresses on Brunswick Street, the door was opened by Ishbel Papantoniou, a portly lady in her early 60s, the wife of the man who is behind the companies registered on this street. We are talking about Marios Papantoniou. Once a tax inspector in Cyprus, in the early 90s he moved to Edinburgh, where he opened a business providing accounting services and company registration.

At first, Ms. Papantoniou spoke warmly to the Russian-speaking journalist. According to her, a lot of Russian companies, as far as she knows, register in order to later work in Europe. She added that businessmen from Russia need this, perhaps because they can “discover a world with fewer, so to speak, restrictions.”

On her second visit, however, Ms. Papantoniou became visibly nervous when a journalist told her that OCCRP was investigating clever money-laundering schemes involving companies to which, according to the papers, she, her husband and her 81-year-old mother had a direct connection. attitude.

“I don’t think this concerns you in any way. “You are interested in something that you have no idea about,” Papantoniou said in response. - We offer office services for such companies, and there is nothing illegal or anything else. You're trying to make money for a company that provides services, pays income taxes and employs people in this country."

The office space next door is occupied by a company called Axiano, also founded by Marios Papantoniou. This company also acted as a “registration agent” for structures involved in cases of fraud in the post-Soviet space. In the reception area, several girls from the staff were eating lunch. A CCTV camera mounted above the entrance monitored what was happening inside.

One of the employees answered the call and, with a Slavic accent, said that Marios Papantoniou was not there, but his son Alexandros could be seen.

The latter appeared soon enough, but looked very tense and was clearly in no mood to talk. Without changing his facial expression, he answered all questions with one phrase: “You better talk to my father.”

OCCRP reporters made another attempt to talk to Marios Papantoniou to get his opinion on the document signed by Edinburgh crematorium worker Kerry Jane Farrington, whom Papantoniou used as a “confidant” in the companies he opened for businessmen from Eastern Europe and the former USSR .

As a result, they failed to contact Marios Papantoniou, and the journalists left the document with a Russian-speaking employee of his office. After this, he unexpectedly quickly responded with an email, in which, however, he did not answer questions about the involvement of his companies in corruption and violations of the law in this part of Europe.

A gaffe worth half a billion

The fraudulent scheme, which OCCRP described in the project “Russian Financial Mega Laundromat,” was implemented according to a simple algorithm: a company from Russia, wanting to withdraw money to Europe, took on the role of guarantor under a commercial contract between two shell companies. After some time, one of these fake structures filed a claim in a Moldovan court against the “counterparty” for non-payment and asked the guarantor - a Russian company - to fulfill contractual obligations. The “own” Moldovan judge recognized the validity of the demand and ordered the debt to be repaid. After this, the Russian company transferred the money to the “plaintiff,” who in reality played the role of a pawn. As a result, based on the court ruling, the money ended up first in Moldova, and then in a Latvian bank, from where, as “perfectly legal funds,” they could be withdrawn at any time.

Stamps that police could reliably confiscate seven years earlier were again and again placed on documents submitted to Moldovan courts to prove the “legitimacy” of financial claims that eventually totaled $20 billion.

Having started in 2005, by 2012 the group of swindlers had noticeably increased their appetites and level of audacity. Now the amounts of fraudulent transactions were calculated not in millions, but in billions. In ruling on the payment of $580 million, Judge Orindas relied on a crudely falsified document, but his other Moldovan colleagues were equally “inattentive,” which allowed the criminals to withdraw colossal sums from Russia.

The basis for all such verdicts in Moldova were promissory notes. Thus, attached to the case of 580 million was a debt agreement concluded between the Delaware company Albany Insurance and the British Golbridge Trading Limited. The first promised to pay Golbridge more than half a billion dollars, which was certified by the signature of a certain Mrs. Jasse Grant Hester and the official stamp of Albany Insurance. It was an impression from one of the seals that were seized and returned by the police in 2008.

Probably, the criminals changed the spelling slightly each time in order, if necessary, to say that they had “nothing to do with it” and cover their tracks as much as possible.

The Moldovan judge could have prevented a grandiose fraud if he had simply compared the promissory note with the original documents attached to the case, where all the names were indicated in the proper form. In one case, the forgery was even more blatant: the name Golbridge appeared on the receipt, while the stamp in the lower right corner clearly read the correct Goldbridge - with a d in the middle of the word.

But for some reason, Judge Orindas and his other colleagues chose not to notice the outright forgery. Some of these servants of Themis are now under investigation.

All the promissory notes used to withdraw two tens of billions of dollars from Russia contained similar “inaccuracies.”

Dubious banks

Manipulation of the ownership structure began after 2008 - before money laundering began to take off. OCCRP reviewed the documents and found that many offshore bank owners are linked to companies that received huge unsecured loans and later declared themselves insolvent.

The “registration agents” also had to “work hard” more than once. Offshore structures that own banks also turned out to be sensitive to changes in the geopolitical situation. Thus, after the outbreak of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the Ukrainians were quickly replaced by the Russians in the role of proxies.

Meanwhile, Moldovan citizens can only wonder who stole a billion dollars in November.

Former Moldovan Prime Minister Ion Sturza said that representatives of the country's political, cultural and sports elite were involved in corruption schemes, but immediately made the reservation that many of them became tools in the hands of criminals.

“Platon and Shor coordinated and implemented schemes on the territory of Moldova from the outside,” Sturza said on the Interpol program of the Moldovan TV channel TV7.

Sturza also expressed the opinion that when the volume of money laundering reached such a colossal level, the “Moldovan side” demanded an increase in its share, which ultimately led to the collapse of the entire built system.

Veaceslav Platon left Moldova on February 14, 2014 and has not returned since then. He is under investigation as a suspect of involvement in theft from the banks of the republic.

Chisinau journalists Ion Preasca and Iurie Sanduta also took part in the preparation of the material.

Capital flight floods Moldova

Its judicial system laundered $18.5 billion

Documents from the Moldovan judicial system revealed a money laundering scheme for a record amount of $18.5 billion. Presumably, the local Moldinconbank, Moldovan judges, Russian, Ukrainian and offshore companies participated in it in 2010-2013. According to the statement of the head of the Moldovan judicial system, Mihai Poalelunga, a criminal case has been opened in the country. In Russia, sources in banking circles say that the schemes with Moldinconbank are unknown to them, unlike other “Moldovan schemes”. But Moldovan authorities admit that Moldinconbank accounted for four-fifths of the country's foreign exchange earnings.

The head of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCC) of Moldova, Mihai Poalelung, told Kommersant about dubious schemes identified during the audit of decisions of the judicial system of Moldova. At the beginning of the year, his attention was attracted by dozens of court orders (analogous to writs of execution in the Russian Federation) from judges of various instances. All of them concerned the collection of large debts ($180-800 million) from Russian resident companies in favor of companies of various jurisdictions, including offshore companies. Copies of several orders, including a document on the recovery of $200 million in favor of the British Seabon Ltd from the Russian LLC Omega, LLC Limex and a resident of the Gagauz village of Kongaz, citizen of Moldova Viktor Agapiev (dated December 14, 2010 and issued by the chairman of the court of the city of Comrat, Gagauzia , Sergei Gubenko), is at the disposal of Kommersant.

The head of the Supreme Court of Justice says that he knows of a total of 33 orders, 24 genuine and nine false: their forms contain the numbers of previously issued orders in other cases, and the signatures of the judges are forged.

The District Commercial Court of Moldova set a record: its judges issued “three or four orders” to transfer funds outside Moldova for $500 million each.

How the scheme worked

“A Russian company, intending to launder money, opened an account with Moldinconbank. The company, to which this company allegedly owed money, filed an application with the Moldovan court for a court order to collect the debt from the company in the Russian Federation and the Moldovan homeless person,” explains the head of the VSP of Moldova. The order, as a rule, was transferred to a specific bailiff, who came to the bank exactly at the moment when the funds arrived in the account. There are two perpetrators in the case, one was arrested and does not admit guilt, and the second is cooperating with the investigation. “As far as I know, not a single amount was kept in the account (at Moldinconbank. - Kommersant) for more than 15 minutes. After that, the money went offshore. This is pure money laundering. According to the documents that I saw, the total amount is $18.5 billion. But they say that more has passed,” says Mihai Poalelunge.

Judges were one of the key links in the scheme and issued orders with a lot of violations, says the head of the Supreme Court. “Decisions were made on the basis of copies of documents. In some cases, the copies were legalized in a dubious manner - one seal for 20-30 pages. When I found out about this, I gathered all the chairmen of the courts of the republic and discussed the situation. We compiled a summary of judicial practice and last week sent materials to the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the Supreme Council of Magistrates (oversees the activities of judges. - Kommersant),” said the head of the Supreme Court.

The materials formed the basis of the criminal case: it was opened at the end of last week on the laundering of $18.5 billion; there are no suspects or accused yet. The Moldovan National Anti-Corruption Center (NCAC) is also involved in the investigation. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation told Kommersant that they had not yet received any requests from the Moldovan side in connection with this investigation, and the scheme itself, described by the head of the VSP, “is new, and so far there have been no investigations related to such a withdrawal of funds.”

The Kommersant survey did not reveal any Russian bankers or officials aware of the details of what was happening. The name Moldinconbank is not heard among them. “It is known that there are Moldovan banks that provide laundering services, but my sources cited other players as examples,” says a representative of a Russian bank from the top 10. “There are no bankers among my friends who would cooperate with this bank,” says a top manager of another large bank. “If we were talking about large-scale interaction, this would be known,” says another Kommersant interlocutor.

In search of economic meaning

Kommersant's interlocutor in one of the Moldovan supervisory authorities, on condition of anonymity, said that the National Bank is aware of the situation, since such large sums could not fail to be noticed there. According to him, in 2013, Moldinconbank accounted for 81% of Moldova’s total foreign exchange earnings, and of the $18.5 billion withdrawn since 2010, $10 billion came in 2013.

In the Russian Federation, large suspicious transactions in the public field are associated with banks doomed to imminent closure: despite the fact that “transit” business cannot exist without the capacities of large multi-branch banks, the direct participation of large banks in withdrawal schemes has never been recorded. This week, a number of Russian media outlets pointed to the existence of correspondent relations with Moldinconbank Russian bank "Zapadny", whose license was revoked by the Central Bank of Russia on April 21. But the scale of laundered funds announced by the Central Bank (2 billion rubles) is not comparable with the scale of abuses described by the Moldovan authorities. There are no indications of Russian counterparty banks of Moldinconbank in the documents of the head of VSP.

Capital export

In a report to the State Duma on April 22, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev estimated the role of dubious capital in the overall outflow at 20-30% (“sometimes up to 40%”), which corresponds to $12-25 billion per year. If the statement of the Moldovan judge is true, Moldova in 2010-2013 provided about 50% of the “transit capacity” for the outflow of capital from the Russian Federation, that is, it was the main channel. However, sources in financial circles previously explained to Kommersant that schemes involving Moldova were not the main ones, but clients of not only Russian, but also Ukrainian, Kazakh, Belarusian, Lithuanian and Latvian banks could use this country as a channel for capital expatriation.

At the same time, judging by the documents of the Moldovan courts, Moldova was the “last link” in the export chain. In all the schemes, documents for which Kommersant has at its disposal, the final recipient was not an offshore company, but a British company with real, albeit non-public, management. For example, in a court order dated November 21, 2011, the Telenesti court sent $500 million to the accounts of Edinburgh-based Westburn Enterprises - its director Marios Papantoniou, who also heads the secretarial company Axiano, worked as the chief tax inspector of the revenue department of the Cyprus government in the 1990s. London Seabon is headed, according to UK information disclosure sites, by Oleksiy Romanyuk - this is the first and last name of the vice president of the Ukrainian subsidiary of UniCredit. Other companies that are beneficiaries of Moldovan schemes also really exist and do not look like fly-by-night companies. At the same time, well-known corporate disputes lie behind at least some of the court orders that Mr. Poalelunge considers dubious. Thus, the Kiev LLC Energoalliance argued with Moldovan energy enterprises in 2010 for amounts similar to those specified in this particular order ($30 million).

Perhaps the loud scandal in Moldova (in the economy of which there are physically no funds comparable to the declared amount of the three-year “transit”; they can be generated either in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, or in the EU or China) is an accident associated with the personality of the head of the judicial chamber. When asked by Kommersant why he was the first to sound the alarm, and not the anti-corruption agencies or the National Bank of Moldova, the head of the Supreme Court responded: “I am responsible for the judges. I don’t know about the rest. Billions were laundered. I don’t think they didn’t know about it.”

It is not yet known what the investigation in Moldova will lead to. The press service of the National Bank of Moldova told Kommersant that they do not have official information about the opening of a criminal case regarding money laundering through Moldindconbank. They clarified that the regulator supervises the banking sector and will take “appropriate measures” in case of violations of anti-money laundering procedures. “The case is at an early stage. We and the National Anti-Corruption Center are investigating it,” Eduard Kharunzhen, head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, told Kommersant. He did not disclose details, citing the secrecy of the investigation. NAC spokeswoman Angela Starinski was unable to comment on the situation, citing the absence of the head of the service for the prevention of money laundering in the country.

Russian lawyers believe that banking sector regulators could and should have paid attention to the transfer of gigantic amounts. At the same time, according to Oleg Ponamarev, partner of the legal bureau DS Law, it is possible to bring the heads of companies from the Russian Federation to criminal liability only if we are talking about the laundering of funds obtained by criminal means.

A businessman with the surname Plato, indistinguishable from his first name, became famous as the creator of almost the largest "laundry" in the territory of the former USSR. The role of the main “washing machine” in this scheme was performed by the little-known Moldinconbank (Moldova). Through this murky financial institution in Russia, so much money has been laundered in recent years that these amounts were never even dreamed of by traditional “launderers” in the Baltic countries. When the “laundering” figures surfaced, small Moldova was simply shocked by the fact that amounts larger than the budget of the entire country passed through this bank. The business was so successful that its founder soon took an honorable 6th place in the list of millionaires in Moldova (in this vein, being a “six” is not at all a shame). However, Mr. Platon could also qualify for Russian and Ukrainian ratings as a triple citizen - in addition to the Moldovan one, he managed to acquire Russian and Ukrainian passports.

Moldovan judges, Russian, Ukrainian and offshore companies took part in Moldinconbank’s shenanigans in 2010-2013. And in connection with the "scheme" names came up such famous personalities as Igor Putin(cousin of the Russian President) and Elena Baturina.

Vyacheslav Platon himself managed to become involved in a large-scale scam even before the creation of a money laundering empire. Before taking up the “wash,” Mr. Platon managed to make a name for himself by extracting money from Ukrainian energy workers using tame Moldovan courts, as well as selling non-existent real estate to gullible Kiev residents.

July 25th this year Vyacheslav Platon was detained in Kyiv by employees of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Security Service of Ukraine. According to the official statement of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, the detention took place with the aim of arrest and further extradition to Moldova. Soon the swindler was quickly handed over to the open arms of Chisinau.

It would seem that justice has triumphed and we can wait for a court decision that will give a fair verdict to the international swindler. But extradition became a prelude to another scandal.

As Kommersant reports, a scandal is breaking out in Moldova, which could overshadow the ongoing presidential race and cause a lot of problems for the local, and at the same time the Ukrainian authorities. We are talking about the trial of the aforementioned businessman Vyacheslav Platon. Once in his homeland, Mr. Platon immediately spoke, and his testimony about the involvement of influential Moldovan politicians in financial fraud became a sensation.

“You chose an unsuccessful figure. Really unsuccessful. Well, you would have chosen some Vasya, Petya. But you shouldn’t have had me!” - Veaceslav Platon said to judges and prosecutors at a meeting of the Court of Appeal of Chisinau. It considered the petition of lawyers who insisted on the release of Mr. Platon from arrest.

At the request of prosecutor Andrei Baeshu, the trial was closed and the press was not allowed into it. Nevertheless, a half-hour audio recording of the businessman’s speech appeared in the media. On it, he talks about how the Moldovan businessman and politician relates to the banking scams of recent years, including the theft of the ill-fated billion (the withdrawal of $1 billion from three Moldovan banks through the issuance of “bad” loans), as well as husband of singer Jasmine Ilan Shor, whose testimony formed the basis of Plato’s case.

In addition, the accused spoke about interests in the banking market and involvement in dubious financial transactions of the most influential person in Moldova - Vladimir Plahotniuc, who, without holding positions in power and being only the deputy chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of Moldova, personally controls many state institutions, including the prosecutor's office , courts and the national anti-corruption center.

The publication of the businessman’s speech caused a lot of noise, and the authorities had to respond to it. “This subject is trying to justify the theft he committed by citing big names, maximizing the use of media resources financed by him, diverting attention from the cases for which he is being tried,” wrote someone close to him. Vladimir Plahotniuc Democratic Speaker Andrian Candu on his Facebook page. Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office promised to study the businessman's testimony.

However, speaking in court is not the only scandal that Vyacheslav Platon created while in the Chisinau pre-trial detention center. At the end of last week it became known that he intends to take part in the presidential elections on October 30 as an independent candidate - a corresponding statement from him was received by the Central Election Commission.

Under Moldovan law, if a person under arrest is registered as a candidate, he must be released to provide equal opportunity to participate in the race. In 2014, this right was exercised by the aforementioned businessman Ilan Shor, who, while under arrest, nominated himself for the post of mayor of Orhei, was released and won. However, according to the law, the candidate must personally appear at the CEC and sign certain documents, including the registration of the initiative group for collecting signatures. Vyacheslav Platon failed to do this - the department of penitentiary institutions did not bring the accused to the Central Election Commission, and the deadline for registering initiative groups expired. As a result, the CEC made an interim decision, saying: the registration issue will be considered this week. However, the chances that the decision will be in favor of the accused are slim. Lawyer Anna Ursachi, representing the interests of Mr. Platon, believes that the authorities will do everything possible to ensure that her client does not go free, because in this case he will have direct access to the media and will continue to make revelations.

Another scandalous story that is being promoted by the defense of Vyacheslav Platon is related to his Ukrainian citizenship. During the arrest of a businessman in Kyiv on July 25, he was found to have a passport of a Ukrainian citizen in the name of Vyacheslav Kobalev (the surname of Mr. Platon’s ex-wife). The Ukrainian authorities first said that the passport was fake, and then they said that citizenship was obtained without following the necessary procedures. Their main argument was the absence in the archive of a form that should have been filled out when applying for a passport.

Lawyers, including one who defended a Ukrainian pilot and a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Nadezhda Savchenko Ilya Novikov, insist that Mr. Platon is a citizen of Ukraine, which means that the Ukrainian authorities have created a dangerous precedent. According to Mr. Novikov, it turns out that Kyiv protects some Ukrainian citizens and extradites others.

In the conversation, Ilya Novikov drew attention to other violations of his client’s rights. Thus, the decision on extradition, which he received from the Ukrainian prosecutor on August 29, provides for a ten-day appeal period, but Vyacheslav Platon, as the lawyer said, ended up in Chisinau on the same day. The defense promises to bring Plato's case to the European Court of Human Rights.

One can only guess what other high-profile names of Russian, Moldavian and Ukrainian politicians and businessmen will emerge during the scandalous trial and what sensational revelations will be made. After all, many famous and respected people used the services of the Moldovan “laundry”.