Four bankers who helped a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin move millions of francs through Swiss bank accounts have been convicted of lacking diligence in financial transactions.

The four were found guilty on Thursday of helping Sergey Roldugin, a concert cellist who has been dubbed “Putin’s wallet” by the Swiss government.

The executives – three Russians and one Swiss – helped Roldugin, who is godfather to Putin’s eldest daughter Maria, deposit millions of francs in Swiss bank accounts between 2014 and 2016.

The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, were found guilty at a hearing at Zurich District Court and were given suspended fines.

The case highlights how people like Roldugin were used as “strawmen”, the indictment seen by Reuters said, a way to hide the true owners of money.

In Switzerland, banks are obliged to reject or terminate business relationships if there are doubts about the identity of the contracting party.

The four executives helped Roldugin operate two bank accounts at Gazprombank in Zurich, through which millions of francs flowed, without conducting sufficient checks, the court heard.

The prosecution had alleged the men failed to do enough to determine the identity of the real owner of the funds and it was implausible that Roldugin could be the real owner.

Sums of around CHF30 million ($32.8 million) were involved in the case, said public prosecutor Jan Hoffmann.

This was despite the musician, who appears on Switzerland’s list of sanctioned Russians, having no listed activity as a businessman.

At the time, the musician told the New York Times that he was certainly not a businessman and did not himself own millions, according to the indictment.

Roldugin was among scores of members of Putin’s inner circle sanctioned by the West, including Switzerland, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot)

> Four bankers who helped a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin move millions of francs through Swiss bank accounts have been convicted of lacking diligence in financial transactions.

> The executives - three Russians and one Swiss - helped Roldugin, who is godfather to Putin's eldest daughter Maria, deposit millions of francs in Swiss bank accounts between 2014 and 2016.

> The four executives helped Roldugin operate two bank accounts at Gazprombank in Zurich, through which millions of francs flowed, without conducting sufficient checks, the court heard.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: Roldugin^#1 Swiss^#2 own^#3 bank^#4 Russian^#5

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Do just fines (suspended fines at that)?
Is this basically Swiss Court saying that anyone helping people who can't prove where their money came from (so it's either from illegal business or not theirs) transfer/store their money won't see any real consequences for their actions? Could be easy find someone willing to help you, if you Can give them enough money and are willing to pay for fines if any wrongdoing is discovered.

"The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, were found guilty at a hearing at Zurich District Court and were given suspended fines."

And were ordered by the court to attend mandatory Swiss training classes on "Graft and Corruption: Best Techniques to Avoid Detection."

Good. As they should be. Although it sounds like not much will come from it..

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It really boggles the mind how few consequences there seem to be for major banker misdeeds.

Yes, if you're rich, you don't go to jail.

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> The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions,

Protect the guilty

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I know, that's a bullshit law they passed a few years back through.

Now only foreign press can find about scandals in the banking sector.

when you get convicted for you nations pass time

And you get to remain rich.

Bankers: “are we still going to be rich after?”

Zurich District Court: “a tuppence for the poor sir?”

Bankers: “here! Now begone before you start reminding me of poor people.”

The system is working as expected.

This is a world where the rich have all the power. In that respect, it's not surprising at all.

I hope the banks are punished.

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Why do people believe laws equal justice?! Or equally naively believe that a legal system is just and fair?!

Helping Putin kills thousands of Ukrainians. Selling weed probably doesn’t even kill a single bug.

Wow suspended fines. That was worth the cost of the investigation and trial!!

> The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, were found guilty at a hearing at Zurich District Court and were given suspended fines.

A suspended fine and they even get to avoid embarrassment. They buried the lede.

good one

This happened between 2014-2016 why is there a Ukraine/Russo tag?

It always appears.

If I would post about russian salad eating competition, it gets that tag too.

Ohh. It was auto tagged. Gotcha.

The best part is, in the in the moment.. money has no real value.

There's a quote from the Netflix series The last Kingdom. I forget what season but the queen was basically going on the lines of what true power actually is. She goes off about how she's weak and how she could easily be killed. If you look in history, a lot of the most powerful people are assassinated by weak individuals. Showing that weak individual can take out even the most powerful. (Think Lincoln / jfk... Etc).

The oligarchs keep forgetting, and so do we, that we the people the general population, have all the power and money means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Example: If we can learn to work together on a bartering system again, the whole idea of money would go away and these people would have zero power. We give them the power. Why we do that? I do not know because we are dumb.

Yes! Because our business is based on helping the very wealthy, avoid paying taxes.

Because a lot of people in this country falsely believe that the laws were created by the people for the people.

When we know that people in Congress aren't actually people their lizard people. Therefore, the laws aren't created by the people for the people they're created by the lizard people to control the rest of the other people. And they are voted on by all the other lizard people. With the impression that these other lizard people represent the populations consensus. The time and time again shows that they vote against their communities wishes. Because we are not a true democracy, we are still feudism basically. Our elected nobles make the decision for us. They don't care what our opinion truly is. Especially if they are backed by their party.

America is very much so a class society. We're just too dumb to realize. Who runs for office typically and get elected. Rich people people that can afford advertising to spread their name about. All it takes is a little bit of knowledge. They don't even have to be a good stance. Americans will vote for a name that they recognize cuz they saw it on TV. It's crazy.

I mean, part of the problem of a bartering system is that different things are valued differently by different people. If you tried to run a whole national, nevermind worldwide, economy through bartering it would fall apart almost immediately because no one would be able to agree what was worth what to everyone else.

That's why the concept of a reserve currency exists. A denomination of bank notes where everyone agrees that $1 is $1, and then you base everyone else's currency more or less around that. Saying the use of currency is the root problem with all the world's wealth disparity problems isn't even close to the mark.

>If we can learn to work together on a bartering system again, the whole idea of money would go away and these people would have zero power.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike.

Money is a bartering system. We barter time and work for money then money for goods and services.

You need a universal medium of exchange otherwise how does e.g. a plumber keep his family fed? There's a limit to how many farmers in the area want plumbing work, so then the guy would be stuck needing a warehouse to store all of the bullshit he works for but does not want, and needs to store until it can be bartered. Everyone has to be a General Store.

Money is good. How we allow it to work and be politically controlled is not great.

Edit: it would be even worse for the farmer trying to offload a whole harvest and just needing to accept whatever people could trade before it expired.

You're not getting the concept. I'm sorry I did a poor job explaining it.

Money's fake. It's made of paper. It has no true value. You can maybe light it on fire and gain some heat from it. It's actually uses are very limited.

What you explain to me was how money evolved to exist in the first place. Yes we all had to agree on the price of something and that's how money came about. Thanks for the history lesson that I already understand.

But listen to this. Im going to continue to say money is worthless. What is money backed in. It used to be backed in gold and other precious metals or other precious items I should say. But who determined the value of these precious metals and items as well. Back in the day. Why was gold so valued?? It's a weak metal? It only looks pretty kind of... It doesn't rust so that's nice.... But there aren't a lot of practical uses for gold either other than.... It looks good. So why do we have the gold standard or at least used to have the gold standard? All this was agreed upon by rich people in the past who had all the gold and set the standards. It was based off of people wanting that rare metal and willing to exchange other goods for it.

All we have to just do as a society is say Bitcoin is our new currency f*** the American dollar and everybody's dollars in the bank would be absolutely worthless. Are you not understanding now what I'm trying to get at??

Money doesn't matter. Only assets matter. And when it comes to assets, only assets that can return a positive yield matter. So gold and other precious metals. Probably not so much. Well gold is getting more valuable as days goes on because we use it in electronics now but back in the day they didn't do that. When they decided gold was really expensive they didn't have electricity. I did it solely on supply versus demand because it looked pretty and there's not a lot of it.

If you're trapped on an island with all this money and another person but the other person has knowledge about how to survive and you don't. Who's going to survive? you with all the money or the person who knows how to survive but can only sustain themselves? Surely they're not going to accept your worthless money on this island where they can't spend it. So who has the power in that situation? The person with the money or the person with the knowledge? F*** what if you had money but they woke up 6 hours before you and collected all the food on the island? Who has the power then the one with the money or the one with the food?? Everything is circumstantial, you don't get it. We allow them to have power because we allow them to. We are sheep get it through your head? Actually, if you can't understand this concept, you are quite the genetically modified sheep like you are so domesticated it's not even funny. And yes I did. Just refer to human as a domesticated animal.

Shall we talk about the arbitrary laws that lock up breeding males during their prime breeding ages?? Specifically, males that are you know not fully domesticated to our society. Then if we think a bigger picture about genetics and eugenics and whatnot and how we domesticated regular livestock if all these males of breading age are locked up. They won't breed and pass on that non-compliant genetic material. Whereas the good little compliant boys will be out free passing on their genetic material and their "nurturing" bringing up their children to be just as naive and stupid as themselves.

As far as I can tell, helping rich people protect their money regardless of its source is one of the economic pillars that makes Switzerland function. Isn't that most of their whole deal?

The misdeeds are way too many and deep to one to account. Most of them get trough unpunished

We already know your grandma was the town bicycle....

I agree with everything you said. I also think birds aren’t real.

I understood your point quite well, the problem is your solution won't work at any kind of national or worldwide scale. Having an arbitrarily valued currency is the inevitable end state of any kind of economy spanning more than a couple thousand people clustered in the same place geographically.

Using your example of someone having survival knowledge versus practically useless pieces of paper only matters under the assumptions that:

1. There is no viable method of fast, mass transit.

2. There is no viable method of (near enough) instantaneous communication.

3. There is no longer a functional, centralized federal government.

I find your insinuation that anyone (myself included) who doesn't agree with you on this point is a:

>genetically modified sheep like you are so domesticated it's not even funny

To be quite insulting, so this is the last time I will respond to you.

Have a good rest of your life!

Now do US!

do I need to even bother to read the penalties these guys faced?

>The men, who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, were found guilty at a hearing at Zurich District Court and were given suspended fines.

nope pretty much what I though it would be..fucking laughable

Yeah I mean people are so angry (rightfully) that they want to drop money and move into bartering or want to upend the entire economic system, but the solution is much more simpler than that, which is to just hold people accountable (especially corporations and their executives) for their misdeeds. Unfortunately, although this is simple, it seems to be exceedingly difficult to put into practice.

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Wtf did I just read ? Is this a parody ?

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*Four bankers were convicted of helping Putin’s friend set up a Swiss bank account.

Just say it normal .

I don't know why you think I'm trying to come up with a solution.

I'm not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I'm solving a problem. I am simply pointing out concepts. You're the one applying these concepts as solutions. I'm merely pointing out the fact that money is fake and arbitrary and so is power. Where are we solving something. Im merely pointing out the fact that people assume rich people are powerful, because they've acquired a lot of wealth but in the grand scheme of things money means nothing and it's not a true indicator of power.

You are the one over here taking this concept and applying it saying that we should get rid of money and whatnot. I just made the point that we could go to a bartering system and get rid of money and rich people would have no power anymore. You got hung up on the back to a bordering system. It's going to be really difficult and the prices will be arbitrary which was the exact point that I was making with money being arbitrary in itself.

You're the one getting hung up and continuing to argue about things that are off topic, then you claim to understand the concept that I'm trying to make. Yet You're talking right past me because you're applying the concept when I'm not applying the concept im merely getting it out to people who don't fully understand it cuz not everyone understands this concept.

DRSGME to really stick the knife in their back and make sure they really feel the pain

Reads like an I'm thirteen and this is deep parody.

No jail time, just fines--whichbwill be suspended if they don't commit any crimes in the next 3 years.

Remember when the Swiss bankers took Nazi gold and then after the war refused to give it back to Jewish victims? Different fascists, different victims, same bloody bankers.

It's the golden rule.

Those with the gold, make the rules.

They did their best to kill the economy in 2008. The consequences? We bailed them out and expressed our displeasure. Then, back to business as usual. Zero consequences for bankers.

Sure, if your understanding of Switzerland comes entirely from reddit comments

It’s the same, what you said, as the original title.

Is different from original, says reddior.

Fuck bankers. May they die in an inferno of human waste on fire

Some places need Batman and some places fucking need Bane to get right.

actually, the finance sector in Switzerland is smaller than in quite a few other countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and France

Good, most bankers are white collar criminals.

Crime! And he gets a suspended fine?! Wtf.

Suspended fines is their apparent “punishment.”

So, in other words, nothing happened to them.

Typical.

Ha!

Don't insult them, they also learned from Hollywood movies!

> I’m not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I’m solving a problem.

If you’re not trying to do these things then what’s the purpose of your comments?

>I am simply pointing out concepts.

Which, without the eventual lead-in to a proposed solution, is as relevant to the debate as pointing out the concept of gravity or time- not at all.

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Don't bother engaging, my read on them is they aren't interested in a good faith discussion, they're here to collect upvotes while arguing:

> I don't know why you think I'm trying to come up with a solution. I'm not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I'm solving a problem.

in response to me saying the below quote from their original comment won't work:

> If we can learn to work together on a bartering system again, the whole idea of money would go away and these people would have zero power. We give them the power. Why we do that? I do not know because we are dumb.

They're trying to pretend they're just offering observations after literally saying bartering is the solution to wealth inequality. I'm assuming they're some unhinged /r/iamverysmart teenager who has fully bought into the idea of anarcho-libertarianism as a realistic and legitimate political position held back by the brainwashed masses too stupid to realize they're being lead on by the evil capitalists.

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We live In a lawless society when the laws are seldom charged against the wealthy but always and viciously charged against the working class poor.

If the law is not applied equally it is not law.

I can see this is pretty unpopular but there are elements of the upper elite who believe through generations of education they are ascending into a new breed of super human.

Not kidding either, I have heard billionaires talk about this over there freaking fancy Select sandwiches and ice cold bottled Perrier I was delivering them during board meeting lunches. Or there collection of 28 small production batch sports cars.

Even Obama insinuated something like this. In his A&E biography special, he didn't believe in automatic voter registration, as the majority of the population was not educated enough to make decisions on how to govern the country he said.

Talking about a system of righteous meritocracy where only the most educated and steadfast should and would be able to vote agreeing with a hearty republic of scholars rather than direct voting was preferential, even necessary to maintain America's world dominance. Essentially alluding that campaign finance laws benefitted the country because it kept Joe Shmoe from being a congress member.

Congress is supposed to be average members of society so that the law reflects each states group of constituents.

I supported Obama and even campaigned for him and when is saw his A&E biography my heart just sank because if I had known that's how he felt about me I would never have supported him.

It may sound crazy but there are definitely truths in your philosophical take on how we are being controlled. At least from the investor class people I have met. Also a Google board member called me a peasant during a walkthrough of our company a few years back where they were considering investing.

"Let us not talk about business in front of the peasants please".

In a room full of PHd research scientists and engineers....

People just see that you think they are being led like sheep and get defensive.

A little civil discourse goes a long way at attempting to teach the people about complicated concepts like these.

Although you may say things a little straight forward I believe it's from the heart and that matters alot. I also totally agree with most of what you say about opting out of the US currency which has been an actual approach at strangling the power of government during the colonial Era which had some long lasting effects.

I want to read David Graebers 5000 years of debt. Talks about the archeological history of money and the creation of the concept of debt. Last book he wrote before he suddenly died after he landed in Italy.

Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Fucking pissed about this shit also.

Stay cool 😎

At this point I kinda feel that “Putins friend “ is the ultimate oxymoron

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Putin’s rise to power and corruption should be a lesson to us all. We need to elect Zelenskys and ignore idiots with hardline policies on crap like immigration.

If we don’t maintain an honest and open government and functional justice system, then there is no justice at all.

A lot of the rich in the world are corrupt, I hope now we’ll be paying a lot more attention to the rich and their transactions. Maybe next time, we’ll notice things like cheques going from imperialist warlord to president 🇷🇺 🇺🇸 …

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"We are neutral"

F---- the rich.

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> same bloody bankers

Lies! It's their grandchildren now

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> What is money backed in.

Economic output and the threat of violence.

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As far as you can tell from what? What research did you do to come to that conclusion? Did you read a few Reddit comments and think they’re all true or something?

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Putin is pissed, so he arrests an innocent American journalist in Russia .. Didnt the Stste Department tell Americans to get the fuk out of Russia when the basketball player deal was going down?

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And they should have had the same done to them.