Several great stories today. More interesting than the weekly Wells Notice rundown, in any event. So how long until one of the Law & Order series (with which The Daily Caveat's wife is thoroughly obsessed in all their incarnations) picks up this story and runs with it. Via the Sunday Times, Britain:

Russian girl at top school probed over 'hot money'

Abul Taher and Ed Habershon
October 09, 2005
The Sunday Times

A RUSSIAN teenager who was studying at an independent boarding school in Britain has had her bank account frozen on suspicion of money laundering. Tamara Platash, 18, who until last summer was a pupil at Sherborne school for girls in Dorset, was studying for A-levels when she and her mother were questioned by officers over the payment of more than £300,000 into her bank account from sources in China and Hong Kong.

When Platash — described as attractive, assertive and “a model pupil” — allegedly tried to transfer £200,000 back to an account in China, police were alerted and immediately froze the money. Dorset police questioned Irina, Platash’s mother, when she flew to Britain at the end of the summer term. Police say seven cash sums totalling £303,730 were deposited in Platash’s account over five months.

Both she and her mother, who are believed to be in Russia, are being investigated by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), which last week said it believed “the funds are linked to money laundering”. The police have dropped their inquiries for lack of evidence.

“We could not prove where exactly the money had come from or where it was going,” said Detective Sergeant Andrew Strong of Dorset police. “We might have been able to make more progress if we had been given more access to information in both China and Russia.”

The ARA, a government agency that pursues cases through the civil courts, has obtained a High Court order that allowed it to keep Platash’s account frozen. The agency plans to present its full case to the High Court in the near future. The burden of proof is lower in a civil court than at a criminal hearing and a judge will determine, on the balance of probabilities, whether the money is the proceeds of crime

Jane Earl, director of the ARA, said: “So far, the respondents have not put forward a convincing explanation of how these funds were acquired.” Platash is understood to be from Pyatigorsk, a city at the foot of the Caucasus mountains in the Stavropol region of southern Russia. Her mother is believed to run a travel business in the city...

...A source close to the Platash family said the money in Tamara’s account may have come from legitimate sources in China, as her mother owns businesses in that country. Platash is believed to have spent the summer in China working as a translator. Neither she nor her mother could be reached for comment this weekend...

More detail can be found in the original article on exactly how what was quite obviously Tamara's lunch money for the semester fits into Britain's overall anti-money laundering regime.

-- MDT

Labels: China, money laundering