MOSCOW - Russia’s federal customs service said on Thursday it had filed a suit claiming $22.5 billion in damages from Bank of New York Co BK.N. “The Federal Customs Service (FCS) confirms the fact of a filing of the suit against the Bank of New York,” Andrey Strukov, head of the customs service legal department, said in a statement e-mailed to news agencies. “The Federal Customs Service is filing the suit against the Bank of New York for $22.5 billion in damages inflicted against the Russian Federation.”The Bank of New York representative office in Moscow was not answering phone calls on Thursday afternoon. The bank’s European chief spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The bank’s headquarters in New York also had no immediate comment.
A former Bank of New York vice president and her husband were sentenced last year to six months home confinement after admitting to involvement in a $7 billion Russian money-laundering conspiracy. Lucy Edwards, a former vice president in the bankÂ’s Eastern European division, and her husband Peter Berlin pleaded guilty to conspiring to help move laundered funds through accounts at the bank. Bank of New York in 2005 agreed to pay $38 million to resolve a long-running federal probe into the conspiracy.
| No one's allowed to steal from Mother Russia! Except Vlad and his pals ... |