Senior Moldovan Judge’s Daughter Lived In Posh London Flat — With Tainted Money.
Most of the money went to a real estate agency to cover the rent of a luxurious apartment not far from Buckingham Palace in which Mihaela Muruianu lived while studying in London. A smaller portion was deposited directly into her personal bank account.
She is the daughter of Judge Ion Muruianu, the former president of Moldova’s highest court. The money was funneled from Russia through a series of ghost companies registered in the United Kingdom (UK), and its precise origin is not known.
But the payments raise questions about the Muruianu family’s access to significant wealth, given that their total declared income for 2012 stood at 752,000 lei ($62,000) – a little less than the $66,000 estimated cost of the apartment for a single year.
When reached for comment, the judge and his daughter both said they knew nothing about the Russian Laundromat. Mihaela Muruianu further denied any knowledge of the ghost companies from which the transfers originated.
“I do not know the kind of activity these companies are involved in or who their founders are,” Mihaela Muruianu said.
Money from Ghost Companies. The Laundromat scheme was elaborate, involving the fraudulent transfer of massive sums out of Russia and into the European Union with the help of corrupt Moldovan judges…. OCCRP.org
According to Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption watchdog, Moldova is the most corrupt country in south-eastern Europe, ranking 123rd out of 176 on the group’s Corruption Perceptions Index. In its 2015 report, TI noted that Moldova’s judicial system has been “compromised by the non-meritocratic promotion of judges and by selective justice applied to political competitors.”
New Scottish links to $20bn Russian Money-Laundering scheme as judge’s daughter paid by Edinburgh shell firm
