The ministry said the group was comprised of managers from two commercial banks, Vek Bank and Novaya ekonomicheskaya pozitisya, as well as other credit and loan organizations.
A spokesman for the ministry's department for economic security said that in the period between April 2004 and January 2005 the organized criminal group laundered about $8 billion using banks under their control and front non-commercial organizations. He added that most of the stolen sum was transferred abroad to the accounts of the front organizations.
The Interior Ministry and the Financial Intelligence Service established close cooperation in the case with law enforcement agencies in Germany, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Israel, Switzerland and other countries to track and arrest the accounts of the criminal group in foreign countries.
