One of Vladimir Putin’s besties has lost a lawsuit against four Nordic banks who refused to do business with him.
Boris Romanovich Rotenberg is the co-owner of the SGM (StroyGazMontazh) group, the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia. He repeatedly ranks as one of the country’s 100 richest individuals.
However, neither that nor the fact that the Russian oligarch trained in martial arts alongside Putin in the 1970s were enough to convince Svenska Handelsbanken, Nordea Bank, OP Group and Danske Bank to do business with him. In fact, some of those facts worked against him.
The banks argued that dealing with Rotenberg would subject them to significant financial risks which they were prohibited from taking by law. They based their argument on the fact that Rotenberg is on the sanctions list the US introduced after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
If the banks would have breached the blacklist, they would have essentially risked their entire dollar-based business.
Rotenberg sued them for discrimination, claiming that his dual citizenship in Russia and Finland entitled him to the same banking rights as other people living in the European Economic Area.
Helsinki District Court rejected his claim as he could not prove that he was living in the region. The court also stated that the banks’ concerns about the financial risks of dealing with Rotenberg was not unfounded, Reuters reported.
The Finnish court ordered Rotenberg to pay the banks’ legal fees of €530,000.
Rotenberg has seven days to appeal the verdict.
The news comes as banks in the Nordic are dealing with the fallout of several money laundering scandals that have rocked the sector over the past few years.
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