Lombard Odier investigated for cash laundering | EUROtoday

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Judicial tile for Lombard Odier. The Swiss non-public financial institution, which has served a clientele of entrepreneurs and enormous households since 1976, is accused along with a former worker of aggravated cash laundering. The Swiss Prosecutor’s Office sees involvement within the long-running corruption scandal linked to the daughter of the late Uzbek president Islam Karimov.

In element, in accordance with the primary indications from the Swiss Attorney General’s Office, the financial institution and the worker are suspected of getting performed «a decisive function in permitting the concealment of the proceeds of “The Office”, created by Gulnara Karimova», which is taken into account «a ‘felony organisation’.

The first investigation

Prosecutors first opened an investigation into alleged wrongdoing by the Geneva-based financial institution in 2017 in a case involving Harvard scholar Karimova, which itself dates again to a minimum of 2012. That’s when prosecutors The Swiss and Americans have begun investigating the Uzbek businesswoman for bribes she allegedly obtained from telecommunications corporations in alternate for profitable contracts in Uzbekistan.

Karimova, who for a time loved diplomatic immunity as her nation’s consultant on the UN in Geneva, was indicted by the Swiss in 2023 for what they stated was her function as “supreme head of The Office”. His father dominated Uzbekistan with an iron fist for 1 / 4 of a century as president, from when the nation gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, till his demise in 2016.

The institute’s response

“The allegations are unfounded, without foundation and are firmly rejected by the bank,” Lombard Odier stated in an announcement on Friday, including that “the bank has always fully cooperated with the relevant authorities.” Karimova’s lawyer had no instant remark.