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Since 2001, the police and investigation service FIOD have unsuccessfully investigated large-scale money laundering from Russia via the Netherlands. The investigation showed that various well-known oligarchs, such as Putin critics Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, placed their extensive Russian assets in tax havens through a trust office in Hoofddorp.
However, it never resulted in a conviction for money laundering or a targeted approach to Russian capital flight via the Netherlands. The investigations were halted by the Public Prosecution Service, to the frustration of the detectives. Prosecutors foresaw problems with provability and distrusted cooperation with the Russian authorities.
The police investigation into Russian money in the Netherlands started in 2001 by a detective in Zwolle. The man established that two Dutch companies were crucial for the money traffic of a number of well-known oligarchs: the Amsterdam Trade Bank, the Dutch branch of a Russian bank, and the Hoofddorp branch of the international trust office Valmet, later renamed Mutual Trust.
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Also read the research story about trust office Valmet: Sliding away their rubles, that’s what Russian oligarchs did via Hoofddorp
The Zwolle detective collected incriminating information from home and abroad, but his proposal to investigate the bank and the trust office more closely ended up in a drawer in 2003.
In 2005, the Public Prosecution Service became interested in Valmet and a money laundering investigation was launched against the trust office in Hoofddorp and its directors. The FIOD investigation service raided Hoofddorp, partly at the request of the authorities in Germany, Great Britain and Spain. The Russians also requested information about financial services that had been performed in Hoofddorp for Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky.
This investigation also failed, partly because the Public Prosecution Service feared it would be sucked into a political struggle. Khodorkovsky spoke openly against Putin and was convicted of fraud. Berezovsky fled to London where he was found dead in 2008.
The Public Prosecution Service dismissed the money laundering case against Valmet in 2011 due to a lack of evidence, but could only really close the case in 2018 because the Russians continued to insist on the transfer of files seized in Hoofddorp. At that time, a criminal investigation into money laundering had just started at the bank ATB.
On Friday afternoon, trust office Mutual Trust Netherlands tried to prevent publication of the NRC investigation into Russian money via Hoofddorp by means of summary proceedings. The office demanded prior access to the full text, but the Amsterdam court rejected that demand.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 16 April 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 16, 2022
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