{"id":74226,"date":"2026-05-29T14:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/74226\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T14:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:05:18","slug":"four-bankers-who-helped-putins-friend-set-up-swiss-accounts-lose-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/74226\/","title":{"rendered":"Four bankers who helped Putin\u2019s friend set up Swiss accounts lose appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four bankers<\/a> have lost an appeal against Swiss<\/a> convictions for failing \u2060to exercise due diligence in financial transactions when setting up accounts for a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>, two sources with knowledge of the ruling said.<\/p>\n

Switzerland’s highest court has upheld a judgement against the four former employees of Gazprombank (Switzerland), who cannot be identified under Swiss reporting restrictions, the \u2060sources told Reuters on Friday.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the bankers declined \u200bto \u2060comment on the failure of their appeal. The court declined a request for comment. The men, three Russians and one Swiss, had appealed to the Supreme \u2060Court after losing an appeal at a lower court in 2024.<\/p>\n

The bankers, who \u200bdenied \u2060any wrongdoing, were found guilty \u200cby Zurich’s District Court in March 2023 and handed suspended fines totalling more than 450,000 Swiss francs ($574,000).<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

(Reuters)<\/p>\n

The court ruled that the men had failed to verify whether the money \u200cin accounts opened by Sergey Roldugin actually belonged to him, \u200cwith indications the concert cellist could be a so-called strawman used to hide the real owner of the funds.<\/p>\n

In Switzerland, banks are obliged to reject or terminate business relationships if there are doubts about \u2060the identity of the contracting party.<\/p>\n

Roldugin had told the New York Times that he was certainly not a businessman and did not himself own millions, according to the original indictment.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin has previously dismissed any suggestion that Roldugin’s funds are linked to the president as “Putinophobia”.<\/p>\n

Roldugin, godfather to Putin’s eldest daughter Maria, deposited millions of Swiss francs in an account at the Swiss branch of Gazprombank in Zurich between 2014 and 2016, the first court \u200cwas told.<\/p>\n

The accounts were closed in 2016, while the Swiss bank ceased \u200boperations in 2024.<\/p>\n

Swiss law meant clarifications were required over how Roldugin’s accounts received \u200cdividends worth millions of Swiss francs a \u2060year and how he had acquired a 20% stake in a \u2060media company with a value of more than 100 million francs.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the bankers argued during the trial \u200cit was plausible that Roldugin \u200bwas rich because he was friends with Putin. \u200cAlthough such favouritism may be frowned \u200bupon in Switzerland, this was not relevant, the defence said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four bankers have lost an appeal against Swiss convictions for failing \u2060to exercise due diligence in financial transactions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[28345,39141,39140,41,1085,276,17,4414],"class_list":["post-74226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-accounts","tag-gazprombank","tag-sergey-roldugin","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-bank","tag-swiss-francs","tag-switzerland","tag-vladimir-putin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116658249915762085","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}