Four Gazprombank executives accused of ‘due diligence’ failure in helping Sergey Roldugin deposit millions of Swiss francs.
Next week in Zurich, four bankers who were employed at Gazprombank will face trial for allegedly assisting a person known as “Vladimir Putin’s wallet” in depositing millions of Swiss francs in Switzerland. The four individuals are being accused of failing to exercise proper diligence in financial transactions and are set to appear before the Zurich district court on 8th March.
According to an indictment seen by Reuters, the defendants are being accused of not exercising adequate due diligence to determine the identity of the beneficial owner of the funds. The Swiss media has reported that the case involves an amount of approximately 50 million Swiss francs (£44 million).
The lawyers of the senior bank executives, who cannot be named under Swiss reporting restrictions, did not respond to requests for comment. Gazprombank’s spokesperson declined to comment on the ongoing trial, citing the presumption of innocence of the defendants. The bank is currently in the process of closing its Swiss operations.
According to the indictment, two accounts were established at Gazprombank in 2014 with Sergei Roldugin, a close friend and confidant of the Russian president, identified as the beneficial owner.
In 2016, the Panama Papers investigation, which involved the Guardian and other media outlets such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, revealed Sergei Roldugin’s role as a “wallet” for Putin. According to the indictment, the bankers did not conduct any checks to confirm if Roldugin, who is a cellist and conductor, was the beneficial owner of the assets.
According to court documents, “At the time of the opening of the account it was reported … that Sergei Roldugin was a close friend of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and godfather of his daughter.” Despite this, the defendants did not try to verify if Roldugin was the actual beneficiary of the assets or the source of the funds. The indictment further stated that only Roldugin’s professional work as a musician was mentioned in the bank’s records, which made his ownership and participation “in no way plausible”.
Swiss regulations mandate banks to refuse or discontinue business dealings if there are any uncertainties about the identity of the customer. The two accounts in question were terminated in September 2016.
Sergei Roldugin, who has been referred to as “Putin’s wallet” by the Swiss government in its list of sanctioned individuals, has previously faced sanctions by both the US and Switzerland following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The prosecutor in the case is seeking a seven-month suspended sentence for each of the four Gazprombank bankers accused of failing to exercise due diligence in financial transactions involving Roldugin.
