A major investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) rocked Britain. I“Destabilization Operation”, seeking to dismantle a top-to-bottom money laundering network run by Russia, has made discoveries that have serious consequences, especially for cocaine users.
Last year, the NCA identified two networks called TGR and Smart, which were offering “various money laundering services” with drug traffickers, especially cocaine smugglers, various firearms suppliers, and human smugglers. The deal is simple: dirty money for cryptocurrency.
Washing powder and baby milk
By tracing the network, the NCA discovered that George Rossi, who ran TGR, had bought a bank in Kyrgyzstan, called Keremet, which was at the center of this money laundering traffic. Not only that: PSB also facilitates payments for a Russian state bank called Promsvyazbank (PSB), which the US Treasury Department describes as a “sanctions evasion center” targeting the country since its invasion of Ukraine.
Keremet Bank then makes payment for “Russian military industrial base”in other words, weapons factories producing weapons used in the war in Ukraine. For the NCA, every purchase of cocaine in the country would fund the Russian war machine.
This criminal network can also go beyond the Channel because of its breadth and organization. In the UK alone, the company will operate in at least 28 cities and generate billions of euros, the BBC reports. To nip it in the bud, the NCA is also trying to crack down on couriers, who are at the lowest levels, who transport dirty money into the country. The money, first hidden in a hiding place, then smuggled abroad to be laundered, was hidden in boxes containing detergent and baby milk.
In toilets in British motorway service areas, advertisements in English – and also in Russian – are even posted to warn couriers carrying cash of the prison sentences they will receive. Another discovery investigators made: the Smart network, led by Ekaterina Zhdanova, had provided financial services to a network of spies tracking Russia’s enemies across Europe. The Russian national is currently detained in France awaiting trial.
