What Was the Russian Laundromat?

Short Answer

The Russian Laundromat was a large-scale money-laundering scheme documented by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and partners. It moved tens of billions of dollars (approximately $20+ billion in the core documented scheme) out of Russia through a network of banks, shell companies and intermediaries.

Slightly Longer Answer

The investigation is treated on this site as emblematic of broader illicit financial flows associated with the Russian system, not as the only or final such scheme. It supports Thesis 2 (International Criminal Linkages): documented infrastructure for moving large volumes of money outside formal, transparent channels. Broader cumulative estimates of illicit outflows in open secondary sources run far higher and remain contested in magnitude.

The site does not claim that every participant was state-directed; the pattern illustrates capacity and networks that can be taxed or used when useful under the symbiotic and hybrid arrangements described elsewhere.

See Also

• Entity: Russian Laundromat
• Thesis 2: International Criminal Linkages
• Sources / OCCRP references