The police raided a leading bank tonight as a Russian investigation into possible money laundering through the Bank of New York appeared to be gathering momentum.
The raid was at the Sobin Bank, one of the most politically well-connected banks, whose owners include some of the most powerful businesses.
The raid created an uproar when scenes of police officers prowling through the flashy glass-and-chrome headquarters of the bank were broadcast on television as bank employees gathered on the sidewalk.
When a crew from the state-owned network, ORT, arrived, they were almost immediately taken into custody. The crew said the authorities had been trying to open safe-deposit boxes.
The crew continued to film as they were taken away, on charges of entering the site of an investigation and filming against police instructions.
Tax and law-enforcement officials in Russia, who have been under pressure from United States authorties, have begun to investigate Russian banks linked to a huge money-transfering operation that involved billions of dollars that moved from Russia to the United States and then to other countries.
At the center of the United States inquiry, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the Bank of New York and a group of accounts at the bank controlled by the Benex International Company. The bank, which is cooperating with the Federal investigation, has said $7.5 billion moved through the Benex accounts over three years. The bank has not been accused of wrongdoing.
In New York, a Federal grand jury has indicted Benex and two other companies on charges of having illegally taken deposits and transmitting money without proper licenses, a violation of state and Federal laws.
The F.B.I. said it had been asking the Russian Government to examine banks in Russia that used Benex accounts. An American law-enforcement official said the F.B.I. had recently asked for information about the Sobin Bank and its links to money movement through the Bank of New York.
Russian officials contend that the United States is providing no information. ''We are compelled to check all these banks, because the Americans do not give us any information,'' the head of the State Tax Service, Aleksandr Pochinok, complained to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. ''That does not mean all of these banks are bad. All of our banks worked with the Bank of New York.''
A member of the Sobin board, Mikhail Solovyov, declined to comment on the investigation.
Sobin has had a cozy and lucrative relationship with the Government. It handles the accounts of the State Customs Committee and has lent money to state agricultural enterprises. According to Banker magazine, it has been among the 1,000 largest banks in the world.
The main shareholders in the bank include Manezh Square, a fancy shopping center owned by the City of Moscow and Energiya, a manufactuer of rocket boosters, according to the AK&M, a Russian business-information agency.
Other major shareholders include the National Reserve Bank, a major bank with ties to the oil and gas industry, and SBS Agro, a once-powerful bank that has fallen on hard times.
The nation's leading oil company, Lukoil, is also said to be a major shareholder. And there have been reports that powerful executives with close relations to the Kremlin are also involved.
Last week, Russian prosecutors opened a separate criminal investigation into the Flamingo Bank, a small bank here that is one of several suspected of funnelling under-the-table payments from Russian importers through foreign banks.
Russian authorities said they had found $430,000 in cash at Flamingo with no official documentation to indicate its origin. That raised concerns about possible money laundering, according to Vladimir Minayev, director of the investigative unit for the prosecutor.
Source: The NY Times
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