Just a perfect story about modern Russia published today on Bloomberg.
Look: U.S. prosecutors are investigating the illegal transfer of $6 billion out of Russia. The capital flight was carried out through Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, whose role is now being investigated by the DoJ. What interests the Americans here is that foreign corruption is also illegal under their laws. You cannot take part in corruption, even if it happens outside the United States.
The bank is accused of carrying out so-called "mirror trading" on behalf of several Russian clients. In other words, securities were bought in Russia for rubles and then immediately sold through the bank’s London office, but this time for dollars. Mirror trading, in itself, is not illegal. But in the case of Deutsche Bank and its mysterious Russian clients, this mechanism was used to move an unprecedented sum out of Russia — $6 billion. The money was transferred and converted into dollars while bypassing any anti-money-laundering checks and other formal procedures.
These are exactly the kinds of schemes that Putin and Medvedev have tirelessly urged everyone to fight. It is precisely this kind of capital flight that Putin declared war on when he came up with all those useless de-offshorization campaigns and capital amnesties.
So who are these terrible "Russian clients" who pulled off the scheme together with Deutsche Bank? Who dared defy the President’s directives and do exactly the opposite? Putin says bring your money back to Russia, while these "clients" are funneling hundreds of billions of rubles abroad.
Here they are, the darlings: Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. The favorite businessmen of that very fighter against capital flight. According to Bloomberg, it was their companies that were the beneficiaries of the mirror-trading scheme. The transactions continued right up until early 2015 — that is, at the very height of this supposed crackdown.
De-offshorization obviously does not apply to the Rotenbergs. For the Rotenbergs, there is clearly a separate set of rules under which taking 300 billion rubles out of the country is perfectly fine and nothing to worry about. The poor guys have already suffered enough because of sanctions.
And now for the most interesting part:
Bloomberg also mentions another bank client involved in the scheme for moving capital out of Russia. They describe him as a "relative of Putin".
Interesting, isn’t it? And it even invites one seditious thought: maybe the Rotenbergs were given the green light to move $6 billion out because it wasn’t actually their own money they were moving. Maybe they were simply helping out a certain friend and his relatives.