Europol, the European Union’s police force, warned Friday that “huge inflows of criminal money” are coming into European banks from Russia and China. Reuters reports the EU’s anti-money-laundering chief Pedro Felicio warned that Russian money is at the heart of a multibillion-dollar racket that recently engulfed Denmark’s Danske Bank and Sweden’s Swedbank. Reuters also quotes a recent report by the Financial Action Task Force that claims a “large amount of illicit proceeds flows out of China annually.” “There are billions of criminal money that are being taken out of the Russian economy,” Felicio said, adding that “zero cooperation from Russia in providing .. evidence” was exacerbating the problem.
