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Britain’s financial watchdog has fined Swiss bank Julius Baer £18million for helping two ‘corrupt’ employees at a Russian oil group squeeze millions out of their company.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also banned three bankers from the industry. All are challenging the FCA findings.
Between 2010 and 2012, the trio allegedly helped Dmitri Merinson, an employee of Russia’s Yukos Group, rake in £2.5million.
He was the main contact of Louise Whitestone, 43, who worked in the London office.
In 2010, Julius Baer began paying him for introducing Yukos companies to the bank. But the FCA said fees ‘were far in excess of the standard rates’.
The lender paid Merinson £2.5million in three instalments, milked from his employer, the FCA found, and charged Yukos companies ‘unusually high levels of commission’.
Yukos’s Daniel Feldman got half the first and second payments to Merinson. Whitestone ‘negotiated and implemented’ transactions, the FCA said.
Bank chiefs Thomas Seiler, and Gustavo Raitzin approved key steps.
Mark Steward, an FCA director, said: ‘There were obvious signs that the relationships here were corrupt.’
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