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Swiss personal financial institution Lombard Odier and one in every of its former staff have been charged with aggravated cash laundering by Switzerland’s federal prosecutor.
In an indictment filed on Friday, the prosecutor mentioned Lombard Odier — one of many nation’s most illustrious monetary establishments — had for years performed a “decisive position” in serving to to hide the alleged prison actions of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the now-deceased president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov.
Karimova, who was herself charged in Switzerland in September 2023, embezzled and extorted billions via her management of profitable Uzbek state contracts and laundered the proceeds via an organisation dubbed “The Workplace” primarily based in Switzerland, prosecutors allege.
As soon as named “the princess of Uzbekistan”, due to her ostentatious jet-setting worldwide life-style, Karimova has been imprisoned in Tashkent since 2014.
An Uzbek courtroom discovered her responsible of corruption and tax evasion in 2015, handing down a 10-year jail sentence. A second courtroom ruling discovered her responsible of embezzlement and extortion in 2020, sentencing her to an additional 13 years.
By her lawyer, Grégoire Mangeat, she has denied all the fees towards her. Mangeat claimed the judgments in Tashkent had been political in nature and got here because of her father’s loss of life in 2015 and the ascendancy of political opponents.
Earlier than her downfall in 2014, Karimova reduce an ostentatious determine on the worldwide scene in Geneva.
She had a brief profession as a pop singer, taking the stage identify Googoosha, after her father’s pet identify for her, and recording a sultry duet with French movie star Gérard Depardieu. She additionally launched a jewelry line in collaboration with Chopard and turned her hand to perfumery together with her scent Mysteriuese, launched in Paris in 2012.
In accordance with costs introduced by Swiss prosecutors final 12 months, Karimova’s self-importance tasks ran parallel to an enormous worldwide prison enterprise that made her billions, largely by systematically taking bribes from worldwide firms determined to realize profitable contracts in Uzbekistan.
The prosecutor’s case towards Lombard Odier accuses the financial institution of failing to adjust to anti-money laundering requirements and its inner compliance procedures.
In a press release, Lombard Odier burdened that the investigation had begun as a result of the financial institution had self-reported considerations to Swiss anti-money laundering authorities about its former consumer greater than a decade in the past.
“We now have taken notice of the choice of [the federal prosecutor] to carry costs towards the financial institution for inadequate controls. For the financial institution, the allegations are unfounded and with out advantage. The financial institution plans to defend itself vigorously,” it mentioned.
“The proceedings have been ongoing since [2012] and the financial institution has all the time totally co-operated with the related authorities.”
Regardless of its early co-operation, the financial institution, which traces its historical past again to the 18th century and proudly boasts that it as soon as performed host to Napoleon, was made a prison suspect within the case in 2016.
A police search in that 12 months of security deposit bins in Karimova’s identify within the financial institution’s vaults — a extremely uncommon prevalence in Switzerland, the place financial institution privateness is normally sacrosanct — turned up a trove of luxurious jewelry value tens of millions, a lot of it allegedly paid for utilizing Uzbek state funds, in addition to quite a few paperwork utilized by prosecutors to construct their case.
A former worker of Lombard Odier has additionally been charged by the prosecutor. Below Swiss legislation, the person’s id can be saved nameless till a trial has taken place.
The person labored for Karimova earlier than being employed by Lombard Odier in 2008.
The prosecutor claims he was answerable for duping the financial institution’s inner compliance necessities, a course of they allege was not laborious for him to perform. The person left the financial institution in 2012, the identical 12 months by which the financial institution’s management reported their considerations over Karimova to authorities.
In a press release, the prosecutor mentioned: “Lombard Odier didn’t adjust to anti-money laundering requirements and its personal inner tips within the opening and administration of the 9 financial institution accounts in query.”
The prosecutor’s multiyear investigation “revealed shortcomings within the identification and re-identification of the useful house owners of the financial institution accounts in query, the duty to conduct further due diligence on higher-risk enterprise relationships, the acceptance and annual assessment of enterprise relationships with politically uncovered individuals, the duty to establish and make clear higher-risk transactions and the financial institution’s inner organisation,” they added.
Karimova can be related to Switzerland’s second-largest chapter. In 2010, Zeromax, a Zug-based conglomerate that invested completely in Uzbekistan, collapsed and left behind money owed of $4.6bn.
The corporate, whose collectors declare it was used as a entrance by Karimova, is on the centre of a dispute about her fortune, a big a part of which stays frozen in Swiss financial institution accounts.
