Austrian company packs ‘‘back-offs’’ of CBA head into ‘‘Stephansplatz’’ logo bags
In Vienna, the prosecutor, during the trial on corruption scandal, which arose between Central Bank of Azerbaijan and the Austrian company OeBS, which was engaged in Azerbaijani manat printing, stated that the diplomats of Azerbaijani embassy in Romania had demanded to return in cash the back-offs of the transaction received from Azerbaijani manat printing. The sum of money which was to be returned to Elman Rustamov, the CBA Chairman, was packed in bags with the “Stephansplatz” company logo and sent to Baku, the Azerbaijani news portal "Haqqin.az" writes.
The portal refers to Austrian sources and notes that the prosecutor has also noted that the former head of OeBS marketing department, a native of Romania, Mrs. F. (the name is not published according to the Austrian law) states that she has had a meeting with the representatives of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan in Moscow. Envoy of the Azerbaijani Bank presented the invoice to the woman and demanded to transfer the money. There should have been mentioned in the documentation that the money was for the marketing services.
The prosecutor stated that as soon as these funds were cashed this marketing phony company, founded by Azerbaijani officials, was closed.
According to the prosecutor, later the leadership of the OeBS understood all the riskiness of this scheme and suspended the shipment of the back-offs. And this in its turn caused great dissatisfaction of the Azerbaijani side. This time, the representatives of the Central Bank sent the accounts of an offshore company registered in the Virgin Islands, and demanded to transfer the funds on these very accounts. But the OeBS leadership refused to transfer the funds by such a dangerous way, as the international reputation of the company was in danger.
"Ultimately, the OeBS representative holds consultations with his two fellow lawyers who say they know the Venkoy Company, which is registered by the name of an elderly woman who is a citizen of Switzerland and Spain. This company that is specialized in "problem transfers" has accounts in Austria as well. Lawyers for their services received 4 percent of the transferred money. Ultimately, each lawyer received 100 thousand euros, and the elderly woman received only 4,000 Swiss francs," the article reads.
Portal writes that in 2008 the Swiss police suspected something wrong in tens of millions of dollars’ transfers to the “Venkoy” company's accounts and launched operative activities over the money laundering. Afterwards, the participants of the corrupt scheme decided to open new bank accounts of the “Venkoy” company in Bratislava and London. The back-offs of the following agreements signed with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, have already been transferred onto these accounts.