News /
Crash of Tu-154 at Smolensk-North--could it have been a bomb in the Polish plane? [233]
this is for Joe and its a bit off topic but i had to type it out so your welcome
The Benex Scandal
In 1996 large amounts of money were transferred from two Russian banks to accounts at the Bank of New York that had been opened in the name of Benex Worldwide. From there it was distributed through various shell company accounts in Europe. Two years later, in 1998, British authorities, who were investigating Russian Mafiya activities, informed the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of irregularities involved in the transfers of International Monetary Fund (IMF) dollars via the Bank of New York to the Russian capital, Moscow. The British investigators suspected collusion between a Russian company, YBM Magnex, believed to be a front for the alleged Russian Mafiya boss Semyon Mogilevich, and Benex in New York.
The owner of Benex, Peter Berlin, was married to a vice-president of the Bank of New York, Lucy Edwards. In late 1998, Berlin was arrested. It was reported that $4.2 billion had moved from Russia in more than 10,000 transactions between October 1998 and March 1999, many through Benex accounts at the Bank of New York. Money routed back to Europe passed through a British shell company and then on to Italy or France.
A two-year long police operation culminated in the arrest in June 2002 of more than 50 people. Two of these, Igor Berezovski and his twin Oleg, ran 10 shell companies from a one-roomed office in Paris that drew the authorities attention to them. Money transferred through Berezovski's labyrinth of financial accounts eventually made its way back to companies reportedly linked with the Ismolskaya and Soltsnevo criminal syndicates in Moscow.
The Italian authorities believe that as much as $9 billion of Russia Mafiya money was laundered between 1996 and 2002, the biggest international laundering operation ever uncovered.
(Lunde 2004)
ISBN 0-7894-9648-8
pg.48
