Several of China’s state-controlled banks, as well as HSBC’s Hong Kong branch, have allegedly processed hundreds of millions of US dollars from a vast money-laundering operation run by Russian criminals with links to the Russian government and the spy agency FSB.
Documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project show that at least US$20 billion was moved out of Russia between 2010 and 2014 in a vast criminal operation called “The Global Laundromat”.
Over that period, Bank of China – one of the biggest state-owned commercial banks in China – processed a total of US$716 million of the Laundromat cash via branches in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, making it the fourth most active bank in the plot, as shown by the documents.
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