Transactions Between Russian-Owned UC RUSAL and Prominent Law Firm in Jamaica Flagged As “Suspicious” By U.S. Bank
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Years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, financial transactions between a prominent Jamaican law firm and aluminum giant UC RUSAL were flagged by a U.S. bank as “suspicious” and reported to American authorities.
The law firm, Myers, Fletcher & Gordon (MF&G), bills itself as one of the largest in the Caribbean Single Market and also has an office in the U.K.
The revelation comes as 18º North mined data from a cache of leaked secret documents from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that was obtained by BuzzFeed News and passed to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The project, known as the FinCEN Files, outlines more than US$2 trillion in financial transactions and associated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) between 1999 and 2017.
While the SARs don’t necessarily prove that any wrongdoing took place, they do indicate that MF&G, knowingly or unknowingly, was party to shadowy business dealings with UC RUSAL at a time when its controlling shareholder was Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. The billionaire was subsequently sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for his alleged links to President Vladimir Putin, and, more recently this year, by the U.K.
