Zubkov told state-owned Rossiya TV that the amount included suspect financial reports filed by banks to Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service.
The deputy PM said that the money goes primarily to Cyprus, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Latvia and Switzerland. Zubkov stated that his government is ‘developing interaction’ with these five countries to try to stem the flow of illicit money.
He also said that Russians have been buying property in foreign countries at a dramatically increasing rate. .
This real estate is frequently “not quite transparent and legitimate and requires a corresponding investigation,” he said
Zubkov affirmed that he is in charge of a new government working group whose goal is to combat money laundering. He said his group has mapped out methods to curtailing illegal financial operations.
The crux of the strategy will be cracking down on shell companies, or companies whose true owner is not readily transparent, he said. A recent OCCRP investigation uncovered millions of dollars flowing out of Russia into shell companies.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Zubkov worked in the Federal tax ministry and later as a financial crime investigator until September 2007, when he was appointed deputy prime minister. In 2008, he replaced President Dimitry Medvedev as the chairman of the board of directors of Gazprom, Russia's largest corporation and one of the largest oil and natural gas companies in the world.
