13:13 30.07.2016

Pechersky District Court of Kyiv arrests Moldovan businessman Platon

3 min read

Pechersky District Court in Kyiv has ruled to arrest Moldovan businessman Veaceslav Platon, who was detained in Kyiv on Monday on an Interpol warrant at the request of Moldova.

"The court has fully satisfied a request of the Pechersk district prosecutor's office and arrested him for 40 days, but we will file an appeal and we currently are preparing it," the Ukrayinska Pravda publication quoted managing partner of Pravovest law firm Hleb Sehyda, who represents the interests of Platon.

According to the report, the lawyer said that the appeal will argue the Ukrainian citizenship of the detainee, as well as the fact that the detainee has a Ukrainian surname of Kobolev.

As reported, the issue of citizenship is the key one, as a citizen of Ukraine cannot be extradited to another state and cannot be detained for extradition. According to the report, the Security Service of Ukraine said that the detainee's Ukrainian passport wasn't obtained through the procedure of the acquisition of citizenship.

The defense of the detainee claims the case against Platon is political and was allegedly "ordered by the top leadership of Moldova."

Earlier, Platon was put on the international wanted list by the Moldovan Prosecutor's Office and a few hours later he was arrested by Ukrainian Security Service officers in Kyiv.

In Moldova, Platon is charged with involvement and coordination of stealing money from Banca de Economii (Savings Bank of Moldova), which has ceased to exist. He is accused, in particular, of obtaining and non-return of credits to the tune of 800 million lei (about $20 million).

In addition, the media reported earlier that Platon was one of the main coordinators of the withdrawal of tens of billions of dollars from Russia to the offshore through Moldovan banks. Two weeks ago, a former employee of the National Anti-Corruption Center of Moldova Mihail Gofman spoke about the laundering of more than $23 billion of Russian origin by Moldovan banks. The Russian Interior Ministry spoke earlier about last year's withdrawal of $10.9 billion offshore through the 'Moldovan scheme', other sources say the amount was $18 - $19 billion.

According to Gofman, in 2012-2014, huge sums of money, including from Russia were laundered through the banking system of Moldova.

"Moldova has unofficially become an offshore, where billions of dollars went and were gone. Businessmen Vladimir Plahotniuc and Veaceslav Platon are those Moldovan citizens who benefited from this deal, along with some influential people from Russia, belonging to the well-known 'Magnitsky list'," the former employee of the National Anti-Corruption Center of Moldova said.

Immediately after the first exposing statements, Gofman went to the U.S., where a separate investigation into the theft of a billion euros from Moldova's banking system was launched. He promised to come back and give evidence to prosecutors on this case, but he has been staying in the United States for more than two weeks now. There he made new statements. He said that in 2010-2013, at least $18.5 billion was withdrawn from Russian banks via the Moldovan schemes. Most of the transactions were carried out through Moldinconbank, which belongs to Platon. The National Bank of Moldova previously said that this bank got more than 80% of the currency receipts in Moldova.

In 2015, the Russian Interior Ministry published a list of banks involved in the so-called "Moldovan scheme" of money laundering. The list includes 19 Russian banks. According to these data, in total over 700 billion rubles (around $49 billion at the exchange rate of that time) were withdrawn from Russia through these banks. A number of Moldovan banks controlled by Platon figure in this scheme.

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