Four bankers were convicted for assisting Sergei Roldugin, a cellist referred to by the Swiss government as “Putin's wallet” and a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in transferring millions of francs through Swiss bank accounts due to a lack of due diligence in financial transactions. The executives, consisting of three Russians and one Swiss, helped Roldugin, the godfather of Putin's eldest daughter Maria, deposit millions of francs in Swiss bank accounts between 2014 and 2016.
In a hearing at the Zurich District Court, the defendants, who cannot be named due to Swiss reporting restrictions, were sentenced on Thursday to pay fines amounting to hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs, suspended. The indictment, reviewed by Reuters, highlights how individuals like Roldugin are used as intermediaries to conceal the true owners of the funds. The prosecution argued that the defendants did not do enough to identify the true owner of the funds, stating that it was unreasonable to consider Roldugin as the actual owner. Public prosecutor Jan Hofmann noted that the case involved amounts estimated at around 30 million Swiss francs, or approximately 31.84 million dollars.
