The Russian and Troika Laundromats

As of September 2026: Both laundromats are known mainly through journalistic investigations built on leaked bank records, plus Moldovan and Latvian official actions. Individual criminal cases in several countries have run for years. Check current court and regulator records before citing an outcome.

Also known as: Russian Laundromat · Troika Laundromat · Moldovan laundromat.

What happened?

In journalism, a “laundromat” is a standing service. Many clients pay to use the same network of shell companies and banks, and their money leaves a country looking legitimate. Two such networks linked to Russia were exposed by reporters.

The Russian Laundromat was reported by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in 2014 and expanded in 2017. It moved about US$20 billion out of Russia between 2010 and early 2014, with the later reporting putting the total at US$20.8 billion for 2011 to 2014. For scale, Moldova’s economy was worth about US$8.5 billion in 2013.

The Troika Laundromat was published on March 4, 2019. OCCRP and Lithuanian news site 15min.lt obtained about 1.3 million banking records and, with 21 media partners, described a US$8.8 billion offshore network run about eight years until 2013. OCCRP said it was operated by Troika Dialog, then Russia’s largest private investment bank.

Which techniques did it use?

The Russian Laundromat turned a court into a laundering tool. In OCCRP’s account, it worked in five steps:

1. Two offshore companies, often UK-registered with hidden owners, signed a loan contract, though no money changed hands.
2. Russian companies, usually run by Moldovan citizens, guaranteed the loan.
3. The “borrower” defaulted, so the guarantor was sued in Moldova.
4. A Moldovan judge certified the debt and ordered payment.
5. Money moved from Russian banks to Moldindconbank, then to Trasta Komercbanka in Latvia, and on into the wider EU banking system.

Why it works: a court order looks like proof the money is owed, so banks downstream see a legal payment. OCCRP said transfers ran from US$100 million to US$800 million each.

The Troika network relied on the layering that offshore companies allow. The network’s shells hid the owners, and OCCRP reported that the identities of poor people were used as unwitting signatories. See the shell company and nominee entries for how such fronts work.

These schemes are sometimes called laundromats because clients did not need their own structure. They paid to use an existing one. That lowers the cost of hiding money, and it also means one leak can expose many customers at once. OCCRP said Troika’s clients included oligarchs and politicians, and that funds were used for things such as shares in state companies, property and yachts. The network also mixed criminal and legitimate money, which made the sources harder to trace.

How was it found?

Both cases came from data, not from bank alarms. In the Russian Laundromat, Moldova’s Money Laundering Prevention Unit had been investigating since December 2013. OCCRP later obtained bank records and shared them with reporters in 32 countries.

For Troika, the leaked records covered accounts at Lithuania’s Ukio Bankas. Reporters could follow the same shell companies across many payments, which showed how a single hub served many clients.

Ordinary monitoring struggled because each payment looked unremarkable in isolation. A court order, an offshore borrower and a Baltic bank do not, individually, raise a flag. The pattern shows only when many payments are viewed together. See the detection overview.

What was the outcome?

In Moldova, prosecutors charged 16 judges, four judicial executors and seven Moldindconbank employees. The Superior Council of Magistrates found that judges had based rulings on documents that were not properly authenticated. The European Central Bank revoked Trasta Komercbanka’s license in March 2016 at the Latvian regulator’s request, citing serious violations and weak controls against money laundering.

After the Troika reports, OCCRP said Spanish, Austrian and other European authorities launched investigations. Ruben Vardanyan denied wrongdoing. OCCRP noted that Russian cooperation with investigators was minimal, and the clients behind the money were rarely identified.

What were the warning signs?

• A court judgment as the only proof of a debt. Rulings on loans between shell companies deserve scrutiny.
• Offshore parties with hidden owners. Weak beneficial ownership checks let the shells pass.
• Guarantors who are ordinary individuals. Moldovan proxies who worked for tiny fees stood behind hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Huge flows through a small bank. A bank in a small economy moving sums far beyond its size.
• Payments fanning out worldwide. OCCRP counted 26,746 payments to 96 countries from 21 core shell companies.

What changed afterwards?

The laundromats showed that big banks can receive dirty money from a small foreign bank. OCCRP said banks including HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Danske Bank received funds from the scheme, which is why the story connects to other cases on this site. Banks that hold correspondent accounts for foreign lenders are expected to ask what flows through them, not only who owns them.

The cases also pushed attention toward the weak point they exploited: shell companies whose real owners are hidden. Whether reforms in ownership registers and court oversight have closed the gap is still debated. See the techniques hub for related methods.

First published September 21, 2026 · Last updated September 21, 2026 · Legal statuses current as of September 2026