PG INVESTIGATION | Shadowy money built steel empire — with bank’s help

PHOTO: Alchetron

Deutsche had warnings about highly suspicious money — but moved it anyway

By Michael Sallah | 21 February 2022

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE — Months after Ukraine oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and his partners abandoned an Ohio steel plant and left scores of workers without jobs, financial crime experts at Deutsche Bank shot up a troubling alert.

Millions of dollars were flowing into its U.S. headquarters for a business owned by the oligarch, but something wasn’t right.

Detecting signs of suspicious money — large round numbers from high-risk jurisdictions — the bank could have refused the transfers or even dropped the client.

But it didn’t do either.

Despite warnings from its own workers, Deutsche allowed the money to keep pouring into its coffers six years ago while the oligarch and his partners secretly amassed a steel fortune in the United States.

The Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Kolomoisky and others in what prosecutors allege was a vast scheme to steal millions of dollars from Ukraine’s largest bank and move the money into the U.S. to buy steel mills and skyscrapers. […]

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