The Great Moldovan Scheme (History of Money Laundering)

The Great Moldovan Scheme (History of Money Laundering)

Let's start a section called "history of money laundering." I previously wrote about mirror transactions, and here I recalled one of the most famous schemes for legalizing the withdrawal of funds from Russia. The withdrawal of 500,000,000,000 rubles, using offshore companies, a large amount of money for transfers, and several corrupt Moldovan courts.

A Russian company's guarantee for dubious operations of affiliated offshore companies is a common practice (hello to all well-known bankers), which people had already learned to work with by the early 2010s. But the Moldovan scheme is notable for its elegance and apparent legality:

Two offshore companies enter into a transaction worth millions of rubles, with a Russian company appointed as the guarantor. Then the deal "unexpectedly" fails, and the guarantor "refuses," prompting a lawsuit in a Moldovan court, which issues a decision to collect the money from the guarantor.

The offshore companies accepted this perfectly legal decision and executed it – the payment, without any questions or additional justification, is transferred to a foreign account – everyone is happy. Thus, the judicial system itself "launders" this money, and no further problems with the transfer arise.

The scheme collapsed due to money-laundering-related problems: transaction volume, associated crimes, disputes among accomplices over money, and participants' frank confessions. As a result, some of those who failed to flee abroad in time (and live happily there) are facing serious consequences.

Interestingly, in reality, this scheme never fully died and in one form or another is still used today. It no longer has to be Moldovan, not as grand, but it remains a scheme.