A massive international multibillion dollar money laundering scheme operating out of London, Moscow and Dubai has been exposed by a UK led operation.
Rob Jones, the director general of the UK’s National Crime agency, has said: “It takes you from McMafia, through to Narcos, through to John le Carre,” and called the investigation “the most significant” money laundering–operation his agency has ever been involved in.
The global scheme operated in 30 countries took dirty money from criminal gangs for a fee and allowed these gangs to exchange the money in the form of untraceable cryptocurrency and allowed profits from drug trafficking to evade detection.
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UK security minister, Dan Jarvis, said the operation “exposed Russian kleptocrats, drug gangs and cyber criminals who all relied on the flow of dirty money.”
The leads that uncovered the scheme surfaced during the 2021 Pandemic lockdown , as drug gangs across Europe struggled to move large sums of cash from street sales into the legitimate economy.
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The NCA has said the connecting thread between Russian elites, crypto–rich cyber criminals and UK based drug gangs have been “invisible until now.”
Yesterday, the NCA announced that their investigation was centred on two companies Smart and TGR.
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Ekaterina Zhdanova, the head of the Moscow–based crypto company, Smart, has been identified as being at the heart of the laundering operation. She was dubbed the Cash for Crypto Queen.
In 2023 Zhdanova was sanctioned for allegedly moving money for Russian elites and the US treasury has said that Zhdanova, and other members of TGR network, used cryptocurrency to buy property for a Russian national.
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The Russian has not publicly been named and the NCA has not revealed if it has taken action to seize the property. In 2022, NCA investigators said the Russian state used Smart and TGR crypto–exchange services to move funds for espionage.
With developments in 2023, the NCA said the scheme helped the state–controlled media platform, Russia Today that is banned in the UK move money for its operations.
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According to the national crime agency more than £100billion were laundered through the UK every year and up to £5billion of the sum was achieved through cryptocurrency. As part of the investigation exposing the scheme, the NCA arrested 84 people and seized £20million in both cash and crypto.
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