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RISE Moldova / OPEN Media Hub COPYRIGHT NOTICE STORY NAME: The shadow banker COPYRIGHT HOLDER: RISE Moldova / OPEN Media Hub COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Ownership of content belongs to RISE Moldova / OPEN Media Hub USAGE TERMS: Share & Adapt - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ EDITOR’S NOTES: N/A SOURCE: RISE Moldova - www.rise.md Open Media Hub – http://www.openmediahub.com “This production was supported by OPEN Media Hub with funds provided by the European Union” LANGUAGE: Romanian DURATION: 00:23:41 JOURNALIST: Liuba Șevciuc EMAIL: [email protected] SLUGLINE: Money laundering schemes applied by Veaceslav Platon HEADLINE: The money laundering schemes used by Veaceslav Platon to steal the money from a Moldovan bank system. DATELINE: Kiev, Ukraine & Chisinau, Republic of Moldova - 14/11/2018 1 SCRIPT: 00.01 - 00.30 - VO Kiev, Ukraine. July 25, 2016, half past eight in the evening. Veaceslav Platon, a controversial Moldovan businessman, is forced down to the ground and handcuffed by Ukrainian police. The arrest takes place only nine hours after the head of the Anticorruption Prosecution Office in Chisinau had announced that Mr. Platon was in international manhunt for participation in the one-billion-dollar fraud – the biggest financial crime in Moldova’s history. 00.31 - 00.34 - Interview - VIOREL MORARI, head of the Anticorruption Prosecution Office A 30-day arrest warrant on his name has been issued. 00.34 - 00.47 - VO During his arrest, Mr. Platon had in possession a Ukrainian passport that identified him as Vyacheslav Kobalev. Kobalev is the family name of his former spouse. He said he has been a Ukrainian national for 23 years and that he changed his name in 2002. 00.48 - 01.01 - Interview - Veaceslav Platon Yes, an ordinary person may wonder why my Moldovan passport identifies me under one family name, and in my Ukrainian passport I have another name. I am a law professional and be assured that this isn’t illegal. 01.02 - 01.26 - VO The status of Ukrainian citizen gave Mr. Platon peace and prevented his extradition. The neighboring country’s constitution forbids the extradition of Ukrainian citizens. However, shortly after his arrest, the Ukrainian security service announced that Platon’s passport was forged. Therefore, on August 29, 2016 – one month after the apprehension operation – the controversial businessman of Moldovan roots was turned over to the authorities in Chisinau. 01.27 - 01.36 - Interview - Veaceslav Platon Please go away. All the money was stolen by Plahotniuc! 01.37 - 01.58 - VO For years, Mr. Platon had done business to the limits of law. His name appears in many police investigations related to frauds in many companies, in Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. He had been retained in custody on several occasions but never sentenced to a prison term. Until his apprehension in 2016. 01.59 - 02.11 - VO Veaceslav Platon 45 years old Studied Law A former member of the Chisinau Municipal Council (1999 - 2002) A former member of Parliament on behalf of Our Moldova Alliance (2009 - 2010) His declared fortune: 60 million US dollars. 02.12 - 02.20 - VO A long period Veaceslav Platon was connected to several banks in Moldova. In some he 2 was a shareholder, others he controlled via proxies. 02.21 - 02.39 - VO Investprivatbank. In 1996, at the age of 23, Platon managed to buy stocks in Investprivatbank for which he paid 800,000 lei. We don’t know exactly when he withdrew from Investprivatbank, which in 2009 had its license cancelled and has been in the closure process ever since. 02.40 - 03.08 - VO Moldindconbank. In 1997 through 2004 Veaceslav Platon served as the deputy chairman of the managing board in Moldindconbank. He and his family owned around 4% of shares in Moldindconbank, but prosecutors claimed that he actually was the proprietor of the control stock in the bank via inter-posed persons. In 2010-2014 Moldindconbank was involved in the laundering of approximately 20 billion dollars from Russia. This operation was later called “Russian Laundromat.” 03.09 - 03.18 - Interview - Veaceslav Platon There’s been no money laundering through Moldova. You are all suckers. 03.19 - 03.32 - VO Moldova-Agroindbank. According to law enforcement officers, in the period 2013-2016 Mr. Platon controlled from shadow almost 40% of shares in Moldova-Agroindbank, the largest commercial bank in Moldova compared by assets. 03.33 - 04.03 - VO Banca de Economii. He controlled almost 30% of shares in Banca de Economii. Mr. Platon says he bought those shares in 2011 via intermediates from Mr. Vladimir Plahotniuc, the current chairman of the Moldovan Democratic Party, and then sold them to Mr. Ilan Șor. In late 2015 Banca de Economii had its license withdrawn and filed for bankruptcy. The motive was the disappearance of around one billion US dollars from that bank and from two other banks. Mr. Platon is one of the men who were charged with the fraud. 04.04 - 04.21 - VO Victoriabank. In 2011 Veaceslav Platon walked into the shareholding of Victoriabank by acquiring 27% of Victoriabank stocks from a firm connected to Mr. Plahotniuc, via intermediaries again. Mr. Platon assures that he sold his shares in Victoriabank in 2014, when the National Bank of Moldova obliged him to do so. 04.22 - 04.52 - VO The range of interests of Mr. Platon wasn’t limited to the banking sector alone. Since the 1990s he had been spotted in various fraudulent schemes in such sectors as energy, insurance, and industry. Both in Moldova and Ukraine. Most often he used to earn easy money in a very simple way: by generating fictive debts that were later certified and recognized by a court of law. Olexyi Svyatogor is a Ukrainian lawyer he had worked for Veaceslav Platon and helped him engineer such schemes. 3 04.53 - 05.22 - Interview - OLEXYI SVYATOGOR, former lawyer for Veaceslav Platon I met Mr. Platon Veaceslav Nikolayevich approximately ten years ago. He was looking for legal services and I was providing this kind of services. He used to invent various kinds of debts with fake documents. I can positively confirm that Mr. Platon Veaceslav Nikolayevich was keen in learning the “Law of War Strategy” by heart – otherwise quite a sound approach. It means that success is guaranteed when fighting takes place at home. 05.23 - 05.27 - VO „At home” means in the courts of law in Moldova. 05.28 - 05.35 - Interview - OLEXYI SVYATOGOR, former lawyer for Veaceslav Platon No one knows where the claim is examined – in a remote court of law, in a little known district where the risks of getting annihilated exists. 05.36 - 05.48 - VO Even worse, lawyers who dared to defend the companies robbed by Mr. Platon could face criminal charges in Moldova. The legal representative of a Ukrainian firm says that Moldovan law enforcement agencies had prosecuted him. 05.49 - 06.05 - Interview - OLEG POLISHCHUK, authorized legal representative of Energoatom, a state-owned energy company in Ukraine One of the alleged witnesses was in Cyprus, the second one in the USA, the third one in the United Arab Emirates, and the fourth - a Moldovan national who had testified against me on false evidence - was actually residing in Moscow with no exact address to be found. I was waiting for justice but no one was investigating that case. 06.06 - 06.17 - VO Apprehended in Ukraine and convoyed to Moldova, he appeared before magistrates in Chisinau under the charges of implication of the billion-dollar theft. Mr. Platon claimed that in fact oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc was behind the fraud in the Moldovan banking system. 06.18 - 06.23 - Interview - Veaceslav Platon Plahotniuc has stolen all the money! 06.24 - 06.28 - VO Platon’s spouse, too, finger pointed to Mr. Plahotniuc at a press conference. 06.29 - 06.37 - Interview - Yevgenia Tulchevskaya, spouse of Veaceslav Platon He [Plahotniuc] demanded half of [Platon’s] business but my husband refused, so the two have come to this conflict. 06.38 - 07.07 - VO In an interview for the investigative journalist project RISE, Mr. Platon says he first met Vladimir Plahotniuc in 2005 and did business with the oligarch since 2011. That year Mr. Platon acquired a part of assets from Plahotniuc’s OTIV Prime Holding in Moldova including 27% of shares in Victoriabank. OTIV Prime Holding is a Dutch-registered company connected to Mr. 4 Plahotniuc who was represented in the deal by Andrian Candu, the current chairman of the Moldovan parliament and the espousal godson of the millionaire. 07.08 - 07.39 - VO In a formal complaint submitted by Veaceslav Platon to the Department for Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism in Romania, the controversial banker said he had paid 80 million US dollars for OTIV Prime Holding’s assets. The money originated from borrowings obtained via affiliated companies from Victoriabank and Moldindconbank. The official destination of those borrowings however was different: purchase of hardware, medical equipment, and construction materials – which are not quite bank stocks. 07.40 - 07.52 - Interview - ION CREȚU, lawyer of Veaceslav Platon This was legal money, taken from credits, though it was not used as indicated in the contract. Nonetheless, this is clean money, from Victoriabank’s resources. 07.53 - 08.07 - VO Ion Crețu is one of Mr. Platon’s many lawyers. He accepted to talk to us via Skype. He maintains that he has been under pressure from Moldova’s law enforcement agencies ever since agreed to defend the businessman. 08.08 - 08.41 - VO In his complaint in Romania, Mr. Platon also claimed that in spite of his possession of a significant share in Victoriabank he was never able to capitalize on his assets in that bank because of regular obstructive measures by the authorities.
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