Jack Laurenson - PrivatBank case in Delaware highlights scourge of Ukrainian money laundering

There's some pretty nasty people mixed up in all this, I bet! The people working to expose this are brave.

That’s certainly the case in Delaware, a small American state with a reputation as a tax haven.

There, Ukraine’s largest bank finds itself at the center of a case that could expose the biggest money-laundering scheme in world history.

PrivatBank, currently state-owned, is suing its former owners, oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholyubov, as well as multiple business associates, in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Simultaneously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, has opened a criminal investigation into Kolomoisky and his alleged co-conspirators.

PrivatBank is seeking to prove that, in the course of a decade, its former owners engaged in large-scale money laundering into the United States, parking hundreds of millions of dollars in various commercial real estate projects.

Tackling laundering

While developed Western countries pressure Ukraine to reform its judiciary and tackle corruption, their own bankers, accountants and lawyers often play a part in money laundering.

The United States and the United Kingdom play a particular role in illicit capital flight, as do the low-tax jurisdictions where much of the laundered cash ends up, such as Delaware in the United States or Caribbean islands like Nevis, the Virgin Islands, and the Caymans.

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