Two Dutch securities dealers and a Polish subsidiary of ING appear to be pivotal figures in an international money laundering network that has channeled billions of euros in dubious Russian money. These are the Nieuwegein securities trader Schildershoven Finance BV and the Amsterdam Tristane Capital, both clients of ING Bank Slaski, ING’s Polish subsidiary.
This is evident from state-secret American documents and reports of suspicious transactions, seen by the FD, Trouw and Investico research platform. The revelation is part of the so-called FinCen Files – the American news medium Buzzfeed News obtained thousands of documents from the US anti-money laundering authority FinCen and shared them with 400 journalists in 88 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The two Dutch securities traders and ING Bank Slaski funneled away Russian rubles via so-called “mirror trading”, a currency exchange trick that could launder dubious money through a carom of stock purchases and letterbox companies in tax havens. For such “mirror trades”, Deutsche Bank was fined $ 630 million by British and American regulators in 2017 for knowingly or unknowingly participating in this trade.
In a secret report, the US FinCen warned in 2017 about the “Moscow Mirror Network”, set up to launder Russian money. Large American banks also raised the alarm with the authorities about these dubious transactions, which were partly conducted through the Polish ING bank accounts, according to the investigation by Trouw, FD and Investico. Two “key parties” were the Dutch Schildershoven and Tristane. They facilitated money laundering by selling Russian securities to Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and other banks. In 2014 and 2015 alone, the two Dutch securities traders transferred more than $ 675 million to two offshore companies that were part of the money laundering network, the FinCen report shows.
Neither ING, nor ING Bank Slaski wanted to respond to Trouw and the FD. The banks say they do not want to go into individual cases. Directors and shareholders of Schildershoven and Tristane also refused to comment on their role in the mirror trade involving Russian billions.
ING still had to pay a fine of 775 million euros in the Netherlands in 2018 because the bank had been negligent in preventing money laundering. At the time, the fine concerned four money laundering cases that took place from 2010 to 2016. In order to avoid a protracted lawsuit, ING settled for 675 million euros with the Ministry of Justice, and paid another 100 million euros on top of that. The latter amount was what the bank would have saved by using too little manpower for years to check suspicious customers and money flows.