Quote:
Most parents who send children to Millfield are rich. Some work in the City; others are wealthy foreigners attracted by the lure of a UK education. In September 2011, the school sent a bill to the father of a 12-year-old pupil. The pupil came from Russia. The bill for a term’s fees came to £10,943.
What happened next was not – on the face of it – unusual. An anonymous shell company was used to pay the invoice. The company’s name was Valemont Properties Ltd. It was registered at Companies House in London and filed regular if un-illuminating tax returns. It had directors.
nvestigators in eastern Europe have been studying payments from dozens of companies totalling $20bn-plus. The true figure could be $80bn.
The authorities have uncovered a money trail that snakes from Russia to the Baltic states – and from there to Europe and America.
It was discovered in 2013 and the first details emerged in public through the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a highly respected independent collective of investigative reporters, which is part-funded by the US Department of State. The OCCRP calls the scheme “the Global Laundromat”.
Those familiar with this world say a scheme like the Laundromat could only function with support from the top.
Certainly not UK banks, it seems, which are supposed to have sophisticated anti-money-laundering processes to highlight suspicious transactions.
Two American banks refused to accept the transfers on the grounds that they looked suspicious.
Yet all of the UK’s major high street banks – including HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland – allowed more than $738m to pass through.
https://www.theguardian....he-uk-and-where-it-went
500 people made up the group who ran the money laundering deal and hundreds more who had no idea they were being used . A lot of thought and planning to get something this big going and keep it going for so long.