Go After Suspicious Transactions, Not Just Banks
An investigation alleges that financial institutions in the Nordic countries and the Baltics were used for a hard-to-detect form of money laundering.
This Lithuanian bank was mentioned in the investigation.
Photographer: Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images
Recent allegations that banks in the Nordic countries and the Baltics have handled large volumes of suspicious transactions, often involving parties from the former Soviet Union, draws attention to a problem that afflicts banking throughout the world: hard-to-detect trade-based money laundering.
The most recent laundering allegations were made public in an investigation of the so-called Troika Laundromat by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit that focuses on investigative journalism. The inquiry involves a network of offshore companies allegedly linked to the Troika Dialog investment bank in Moscow. Between 2006 and 2013, these companies reportedly moved billions of dollars through accounts at a Lithuanian bank using trade-based strategies. According to the OCCRP: