Italian politician received illicit funds through Estonian bank
Millions paid to an Italian politician through an Estonian bank were just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of very large amounts of money that flowed through local banks between 2012 and 2014, Postimees wrote on Tuesday.
The trial of Luca Volonté, a member of the Italian parliament, is to continue in Milan in the next weeks. Volonté is accused of having accepted substantial bribes from sources in Azerbaijan, in exchange for which he pushed for politics favorable to the country and lobbied its interests in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The case is directly connected to Estonia, as a fund connected with Volonté, Novae Terra, received transfers amounting to €2.17 million from accounts with Danske Bank’s Estonian branch.
The companies that made the transfers, Metastar Invest LLP, LCM Alliance LLP, Polux Management, and Hilux Services LP, are registered in the United Kingdom. Their owners can be traced to letterbox companies in the tax havens of the Marshall Islands, Belize, and the British Virgin Islands, all run by service providers specializing in obscuring original ownership.
The Italian prosecutor in Volonté’s case believes that the total amount of money that moved through Estonia in connection with such schemes exceeds a billion euros.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
