US Attorney Preet Bharara Photo: REUTERS
Stephen: It’s not surprising to see Cyprus is listed as one of the countries where Russian mafia money was laundered…
By AFP, The Telegraph, UK – April 17, 2013
Thirty four people have been charged across the US over alleged links to the Russian mafia and a high stakes illegal gambling circuit catering to multimillionaires.
Clients, including Russian oligarchs, wracked up debts worth hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars, the Justice Department said in a statement on Tuesday night
Faced with the wrath of the Russian mob, the gamblers paid up, the statement said, citing one client, who lost some $2 million (£1.3 million) and surrendered his plumbing company as payment.
The money was laundered through bank accounts and shell companies in Cyprus and the US.
The charges “demonstrate the scope and reach of Russian organised crime,” said FBI New York assistant chief George Venizelos.
“One of the principal defendants is a notorious Russian ‘thief-in-law’ allegedly directing an international conspiracy through Cyprus to the US,” he added.
US Attorney Preet Bharara continued: “These criminal enterprises were vast and many-tentacled, with one of them reaching across the Atlantic to launder tens of millions of dollars from Russia to the U.S. via Cyprus and in some cases, back again.”
The gambling was done through web sites and in high stakes poker rooms in and around New York City.
Arrests were made in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Los Angeles, but at least four defendants remained at large.
