The French bank managed investments worth several hundred million euros on behalf of a Cypriot company that French and American investigators are looking into.
ByAnne Michel and Abdelhak El Idrissi
Time to 4 min.
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It is a sensitive case, involving judicial authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. French investigators opened a preliminary probe in June into "aggravated money laundering," as confirmed to Le Monde by the Paris prosecutor's office. The investigation examines several suspicious financial flows made between 2019 and 2021 through TCR International Limited, registered in Cyprus. At that time, TCR International carried out investment transactions on behalf of its clients with BNP Paribas Securities Services, a branch of the French group BNP Paribas, as its banking partner.
The judicial procedure – supervised by the National Jurisdiction for Combating Organized Crime (JUNALCO), a specialized inter-regional court of the prosecutor's office – has been entrusted to the judicial investigations department of the Finance Ministry, known as SEJF. "Over the period from 2019 to 2021, several hundred million euros and dollars allegedly circulated through TCR International's cash accounts in France, corresponding to funds of potentially dubious origin and/or flows with no explicit economic logic," said the Paris prosecutor's office.
The previously unreported amounts involved exceed €220 million. The identity of TCR's clients is also at the heart of the investigation.
TCR International Limited is a brokerage firm that sells financial market investment advisory services and manages funds on an international scale. Its clients include companies and high-net-worth individuals. From January 2019 to January 2022, BNP Paribas Securities Services provided this Cypriot entity with "custody services" – a service consisting of safeguarding shares and bonds on behalf of institutional clients in dedicated "cash or securities accounts." Along with other big international banks, BNP Paribas is one of the world's major providers of this type of service.
An investigation into Prigozhin and the Wagner Group
It was in the context of this contract that suspicious transactions involving TCR International came to the French judiciary's attention, which began investigating the origin and destination of the funds. The investigators did not, however, come across these transactions by chance. It all began with an investigation by the United States federal government, which has been looking into the financial networks used by the Wagner Group and its former leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died last August in the crash of his private jet. The American investigators have sought to identify financial intermediaries who may have been involved in such transactions. In this context, their attention has been focused on certain flows linked to TCR International and having transited through BNP Paribas Securities Services. A task that is made all the more complex by the potential use of shell companies.
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