Russia dominated the island’s banking system under the watch of the European Union.

ICIJ.org

CYPRUS CONFIDENTIAL series

A new investigation by ICIJ and 68 media partners exposes the sprawling financial industry that has powered the Putin regime as it dominates its neighbors — and undermines the West.

n 2014, two senior officials of one of the biggest banks in Cyprus, RCB Ltd., visited Constantinos Petrides, a top aide to the country’s president. They weren’t there to talk banking. Instead, according to a Cyprus government investigation, the officials pressed Petrides to approve the citizenship application of a Russian national he said was under sanction by the European Union.

Petrides balked, and the meeting got heated.

“One of them almost accused me of being a traitor and harming relations between Cyprus and Russia because I didn’t want to naturalize a person,” Petrides told the investigators.

Tiếp tục đọc “How Cyprus rose to become the beating heart of the Putin regime’s shadow financial system” →