The FBI is seeking the financial records of a now-shuttered bank in Cyprus used by wealthy Russians with political connections and is being investigated for money laundering by the US government, a report on Sunday said.
A source told the Guardian that the information sought from FBME bank was tied to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which indicted President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in October.
US attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn are also looking at FBME – formerly the Federal Bank of the Middle East – to learn how stolen Russian government funds ended up in real estate investments in New York and fraudulent billing practices in its credit card services unit, Bloomberg reported.
FBME, which was based in Tanzania but carried out 90 percent of its banking in Cyprus, was considered a “primary money laundering concern” by the US Treasury.
The US government, using regulatory tools established after Sept. 11, barred US banks from doing business with FBME, essentially closing it down, The Guardian said.
Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty to laundering money through foreign banks to hide funds paid to them by pro-Russian groups in Ukraine.
A spokesman for FBME told The Guardian that Manafort was never a client.
In a statement on Saturday, the defunct financial institution shot down accusations that it was a conduit for money laundering.
“FBME has not engaged in money-laundering and was never accused of such until the FinCEN allegations. The bank has acted in compliance with all the EU and Cyprus Anti-Money Laundering directives; a fact corroborated by multiple third-party auditors,” the bank said.
- NewYorkPost
