A former Ukrainian lawmaker and his ex-wife appeared before Monaco’s criminal court this week, accused of laundering millions of euros siphoned from public funds in Ukraine to purchase luxury real estate on the Riviera, Monaco-Matin has reported.
The long-running investigation — stretching back eight years — culminated in a hearing on Tuesday, November 4, before a panel of magistrates in the Principality. Prosecutors allege that the former MP, identified as Ruslan T., once a member of the Odessa City Council, funnelled €6.7 million in embezzled funds through a network of offshore shell companies, later using the money to acquire properties at the prestigious Grand Hôtel du Cap Martin.
According to the prosecution, five Monaco-based bank accounts were used to conceal the origins of the funds. The financial intelligence unit SICCFIN (now AMSF) first raised the alarm in July 2017, noting suspicious transactions involving Monegasque civil companies. International letters rogatory were subsequently issued to Ukraine and other jurisdictions.
Deputy Attorney General Morgan Raymond described Ruslan T. as the “mastermind” of the scheme, accusing him of turning Monaco into “a financial hub for laundering” through a complex web of entities registered in Dubai, Lithuania, Cyprus, New Zealand and Norway. He requested a five-year prison term and a €500,000 fine for the former politician, and a three-year suspended sentence with a €300,000 fine for his ex-wife, along with confiscation of the seized assets and a ten-year ban on managing companies in Monaco.
Ruslan T. did not attend the hearing. He is believed to be living in Dubai, evading an international arrest warrant and an Interpol Red Notice. His former wife, who holds a 99 percent stake in the Monegasque companies tied to the case, insisted she had been “used” by her ex-husband as a front, denying any knowledge of his dealings.
Defence lawyers for both defendants denounced what they described as “serious shortcomings” in the prosecution’s case. Paris-based counsel Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard, representing Ruslan T., argued that Ukrainian authorities never proved any predicate offence of money laundering, and that the contested wastewater treatment project at the centre of the corruption claims had indeed been completed without overbilling.
Her colleague José-Marie Bertozzi, representing the ex-wife, went further, suggesting the case bore the hallmarks of political retribution against a former MP who fell out of favour in Ukraine’s shifting power landscape. “There is nothing concrete in Ukraine,” he said, maintaining that his client had no role in her husband’s financial activities beyond nominal administrative involvement.
The Monaco court will deliver its verdict on Tuesday, December 16.
