Financial Sanctions in the Wake of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Draw Global Attention to 'Criminal Services Industry' (Feat. Drew Sullivan)

Ratcheting up the financial sanctions that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden announced a dedicated Department of Justice task force to go after Vladimir Putin's oligarchs during Tuesday night's State of the Union address: "We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains," the U.S. president declared. Investigative journalists have long traced the opaque flows of Russian oligarch money around the world, and few have done it as tenaciously and effectively as the European collective Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). On the latest episode of Law&Crime's podcast "Objections: with Adam Klasfeld," OCCRP's co-founder and publisher Drew Sullivan describes how Putin and his oligarchs hide their money through what he calls the "criminal services industry." "These law firms and banks are really helping these relatively provincial, Eastern European leaders to suddenly find that they could steal money and move it offshore, bring it back in another form and get done what they wanted to get done," he noted. Sullivan also details the "laborious" process through which reporters uncover assets hidden in layers of "nested," anonymous corporations. Devastating sanctions to Russia's most important banks prompted Putin over the weekend to effectively threaten nuclear war, a development Sullivan construes as a sign that the global financial backlash to his war on Ukraine has hit the autocrat where it hurts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.