A US congressional delegation headed by James Leach (R, Iowa) Chairman of the Banking and Financial Services Committee began meetings yesterday in Moscow with the Russian Government to pursue allegations of money-laundering, and the possibility that IMF funds had been included in the £15bn of transfers that passed through the infamous Bank of New York account which has become the subject of multiple firings, resignations and investigations.
On a perfect and unseasonably warm day, the delegation, accompanied by FBI and Embassy staffers, began by meeting the newly-appointed head of Russia's Audit Chamber, Sergei Stepashin. He asked jokingly why there was no-one from the CIA (Russian sense of humour), but after early pleasantries the press were asked to leave.
The allegations are in fact strongly denied by the Russian authorities. Stepashin admits that the Russian Government had 70% of its assets in the Bank of New York during much of the period under review, and says he is serious about investigating possible connections between the $15bn and Government money. Alexander Shokhin, Chairman of the Duma's Committee on Credit Organisations and Financial Markets, claims that the IMF and Russian mafia allegations are nothing but a smokescreen whipped up by the senior management of the Bank of New York, and that the investigations by Congress had a political colouration.
James Leach said after the meeting that the two sides had agreed to exchange additional information, but that the affair was highly complex and would take a long time to unravel. He related it to the whole subject of Russian capital flight.
Estimates of capital flight from Russia over the past ten years run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, dwarfing the Bank of New York's $15bn. Given the murkiness of Russian public finances, and the byzantine complexity of the Central Bank's financial operations during the GKO years, it is quite unlikely that the truth will ever be known. There are probably a lot of people in high positions in the Russian banking sector with a distinct lack of interest in looking for it.
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