Tuširanka: Russian Laundromat
Istvan David
Tuširanka comments on the story of Ostro.si about the Russian colonisation of Croatian island of Mali Lošinj.
Family members and close associates of Mihajlo Perenčević, a wealthy Croatian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, received millions of dollars from Russia under the guise of fictitious real estate purchases.
The funds were deposited in the recipients’ personal bank accounts in Austria, thereby possibly evading Croatian money laundering controls, taxes, and questions about their origins.
The exact source of the money is unknown. But the offshore company that made the payments is connected to a network that was used to launder funds stolen from the Russian state budget in the so-called “Magnitsky Case.” The transfers to Perenčević’s family and associates took place just as that money was being funneled out of Russia.
Reporters found the transactions — and some of the unfulfilled contracts that underpinned them — in a set of leaked records from Ukio Bankas. The now-defunct Lithuanian bank was central to the Troika Laundromat, a vast money movement scheme that was revealed by OCCRP and its media partners last year. The dozens of offshore companies that formed the Laundromat also used fictitious deals to justify large transfers of money out of Russia — and they also used Ukio bank accounts.
Istvan David
What is Tuširanka?
Generally, we publish Tuširanka only in Slovenian language as a weekly visual commentary created by brilliant Slovenian illustrators.
Given complete media censorship of our the story about Russian investments in Croatia we decided to break our routine and translate it into English and Croatian.
Tuširanka puts the illustration on the pedestal above the word. It upgrades the traditional press commentary by using principles of newspaper caricature in order for it to find new life in the digital world.
A »tuširanka« is an ink drawing, but on Oštro.si it is a weekly visual commentary, which is holding a critical mirror up to current events. Sometimes it provokes laughter, even bitter, sometimes it acts like a cold shower. For me or you. For all of us. For society.