An investigation by the Financial Times has uncovered a money laundering scheme run by Kremlin-controlled fintech A7 that tricked international banks into handling billions of dollars in sanction-busting payments to Russian state companies.
According to the report, A7 exploited controls within the Swift international payments messaging system to funnel the funds, allowing sanctioned Russian state entities to receive payments through channels that international banks believed were compliant.
The scheme reportedly allowed billions of dollars to move to Russian state companies despite sanctions designed to cut them off from the global financial system. The investigation identifies A7 as controlled by the Kremlin, pointing to state involvement in the alleged scam.
Details of how the controls were bypassed and which specific banks were affected were laid out in the FT investigation, which examined the mechanics of the payments and the institutions caught up in processing them.
For more details, see the original report at Finextra.
