Russian police find Georgia link in laundering ring

MOSCOW, Oct 18: Russian police say they have busted a criminal group with links to Georgia and are accusing it of laundering eight billion dollars via Moscow-based commercial banks.

The charges, detailed in an interior ministry statement late yesterday, come amidst a simmering row between Georgia and Russia after Tbilisi's brief arrest of Russian army officers last month for alleged spying.

Russia has since cut transport and postal links with Georgia and deported hundreds of Georgian immigrants. It says the small Caucasus state, ruled from Moscow for almost 200 years, needs to defer to Russia rather than line up with the West.

In a crackdown that critics say exposes the arbitrariness of the Russian legal system, Moscow has shut down Georgian businesses and casinos after finding they were run by alleged gangsters.

The interior ministry statement said a criminal group had been laundering money in Russia on the orders of a Georgian national known as Dzhuba, whom it said had ''strong ethnic and financial ties with criminal elements of the Georgian diaspora''.

''This channel was actively used for transferring money to Georgia and other countries,'' the statement said. ''The money came mainly from illegal banking operations, casinos, robberies and embezzlement of budget funds.'' The ministry alleged the group had been laundering money through Moscow banks Vek Bank and Tsenturion, both of which have been stripped of their banking licences by the central bank on money-laundering charges.

Vek Bank, declared bankrupt in July 2005, cashed more than 40 billion roubles between January and May 2005, well above the size of its own funds at 17 billion, the central bank has said, while Tsenturion had its banking licence stripped in August.

The ministry statement said the group laundered over 200 billion roubles (.42 billion), more than 0 million and some 66 million euros between April 2004 and January 2005.

The criminal group's ''income from illegal banking operations amounted to over 0,000 daily,'' it said.

Alexander Torshin, deputy chairman of the upper parliament house Federation Council, speculated that the murder last month of central bank deputy chairman Andrei Kozlov, who waged a war against money launderers, might have been linked to the affair.

''When such a net is thrown, all kinds of small fish get caught in it,'' he told Izvestia daily.

Kozlov had shut down dozens of banks suspected of money laundering.

Prosecutors said this week they had arrested three people over his assassination. Kommersant business daily said one of the three Ukranian assassins surrendered to police after they were not paid for the job and began fearing for their lives.

It said police was also looking at banks under regulatory scrutiny but did not name any.

REUTERS