A Ukrainian man, who has provided significant money-laundering services to the Kinahan cartel, bought a controlling share in a bank three weeks after being sanctioned by the United States.
Smart and TGR have been named by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) as two Russian-speaking networks at the heart of the global money-laundering conspiracy. They specialise in stealth conversions of cryptocurrency to cash.
The Russian-Ukrainian network is in the news again this week, a year after the US sanctions were imposed. An Garda Síochána has confirmed it arrested seven people linked to the network. The suspects, who are before the courts, were detained during three different operations in April and October. The operations were carried out in Dublin and Leitrim.
A total of €1.36 million in cash was seized by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau during those operations. Included in this total was €638,000, which was seized after gardaí stopped a car in Cabra, Dublin, and searched a property there in April. The money is believed to be the proceeds of crime, mostly drug dealing. It was in the global network’s pipeline to be laundered or converted into cryptocurrency when it was seized.
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The Garda has been involved in the global operation against the network along with law enforcement in Britain, the US, France and the United Arab Emirates.
The money-laundering network was helping Russians and the Russian state move money in a manner that sidestepped international sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, the NCA said people who buy cocaine in Britain are helping finance Russia’s war effort.
Ukrainian George Rossi controls TGR Group. On Christmas Day last year, Altair Holding SA, which is linked to Rossi, “purchased their 75 per cent stake” of Kyrgyzstan-based Keremet Bank “which was utilised for sanctions evasion”, the NCA said on Friday.
“Keremet has subsequently been identified as facilitating cross-border payments on behalf of Promsvyazbank, a Russian state-owned bank, which supported companies involved in the Russian military industrial base,” the British agency added.
The Smart and TGR networks have helped criminals, such as the Kinahan cartel and Russian “elites” sanctioned by the US authorities, to grow and conceal their wealth, and move it around the world undetected.
They ran services specifically for clients based in Dubai, where the Kinahans are based. The boutique services offered by the Russian networks include “the receipt of cash and making the value available to clients in the form of cryptocurrency”.
They also “provided a prepaid credit card service”, the NCA said, allowing for criminal wealth to be spent in a manner that was untraceable and concealed the location of criminals.
Another money-laundering service involves “obfuscating the source of funds to allow high-net worth” clients, mostly Russians, purchase property in the UK.
Rossi was among a group of people sanctioned last year by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This is the same office that, in 2022, sanctioned Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan snr and his sons, Daniel and Christopher jnr, as well as other senior members of the cartel.
