German prosecutors indicted five men, including four German banking executives, on charges of laundering $150 million for a former Russian telecommunications minister in one of the highest-level criminal probes of a Russian official outside Russia.
The indictments follow a six-year investigation into allegations that four current or former Commerzbank AG executives and a Danish lawyer assisted former Russian telecommunications minister Leonid Reiman in selling telecommunications assets he allegedly controlled in offshore companies, while concealing who the true owner was.
From 1996 to 2001, the German bank held the telecom assets in trust for a Danish lawyer, Jeffrey Galmond. Prosecutors contend Mr. Galmond acted as a front for Mr. Reiman, who, they say, had converted telecom businesses from state ownership to that of a number of foreign companies that Mr. Reiman allegedly set up and controlled after the collapse of communism in the 1990s.
Mr. Galmond has repeatedly denied allegations of money laundering and says he owned the stakes in the telecom businesses outright. Mr. Galmond didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article.
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