Banks, Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation

"I can affirm that all the transactions carried out by us are real. I cannot comment in more detail because that would be in breach of the confidentiality principle," Sulev Seppik said in his response to a question from Postimees.

A part of the Seppik business empire is frozen fish wholesaler OU Vertimex that made a profit of over 20 mln euros in 2017. The three members of the Seppik family have equal stakes in the venture.

Swedbank bank statements at Postimees' disposal show that Vertimex transferred 1.55 mln US dollars to the account of a UK company called Credojet Alliance LLP in Danske Bank in just a few months in 2014. Credojet Alliance is a shell company registered in a warehouse on the outskirts of London. The same address houses over a hundred other fictitious companies.

The now defunct Credojet was founded by Altimex Ltd. and Crestberg Ltd. that are registered in the Commonwealth of Dominica. Aripaev has previously reported that subsidiaries of Altimex and Crestberg were used in the process of laundering suspicious assets of Azerbaijani leaders where around one hundred UK companies bounced roughly a billion euros between them, with the  Altimex and Crestberg documents signed by Brussels dentist Ali Moulaye.

Buzzfeed suggests schemers have used Moulaye's identity without his knowledge. A network of shell companies was created that was used, for example, in the Moldovan money laundering affair and Deutsche Bank schemes where suspicious companies pursued billions worth of mirror transactions inside the bank that culminated in a 500 mln dollar fine for Deutsche.

However, schemes do not only concern Credojet's founders. One can come across the company itself in a bank statement that leaked out of Moldiconbank. The Moldovan bank facilitated the movement of 1.1 bn euros of suspicious origin in 2011-2014 of which 6.5 mln euros landed on the Danske account of Credojet in early 2014. While there were several remitters, the details always read "for construction equipment."

Credojet has also transferred sums to Swedbank. Before the aforementioned transactions, the UK shell company transferred 1.19 mln dollars in a series of round sums to the account of a Tallinn company that sells turbochargers. It seems that the mysterious Credojet trades in construction equipment, car parts and seafood.

On Dec. 19, 2014, OU Vertimex transferred Credojet 144,000 dollars, with the details reading "20141219". Credojet received 145,000 dollars from another Estonian company called Multiforce on the same day.

Multiforce is another company buying and selling frozen fish and sporting impressive financials. The company is owned by Ain, Sulev and Siim Seppik in equal parts.

There are other interesting coincidences. Both Multiforce and Vertimex have transferred Credojet and another UK shell company, Midex Sales LTD, the exact same sum of 148,148 euros at different times and under different details. In a series of seven payments in all.

Midex Sales, Credojet and UK shell company Euro Project LP have received, at different times and based on different contracts, exactly 149,206 dollars from both Multiforce and Vertimex. These payments total six. The pattern is one of similar or identical sums, irrespective of the remitter and beneficiary.

During the period most of these transactions took place, until April 15, 2015, Multiforce was run by Kristina Zahharova, with a stake in the company belonging to Swiss firm Quantico Gbmh. The latter was in turn run by German citizen Joachim Nedela whose ties to the Seppiks are known in Estonia.

It wasn’t until the spring of 2015 that Sulev Seppik became CEO of the company, with Multiforce moving into the hands of the Seppik family in full in 2017.

Sulev Seppik's assignment also brought about a change in payment details. Instead of the previous practice of using transaction dates, details now read "as per agreement." Payments to Credojet and Midex, totaling 979,000 dollars, continued under Seppik's management.

Sulev Seppik also has a connection to Formus Baltic that Postimees described in its first article on the Swedbank leak, that received 97 mln US dollars from UK shell company Wireberg over a period of six months. Seppik was in charge of Dmitri Novgorodtsev's firm OU Whiteriver, while the latter was a stakeholder in Formus Baltic for a long time.

Companies with ties to the Seppiks have transferred a total of 6.7 mln euros to shell companies in the UK. But none of this means that the Seppiks have engaged in money laundering. The only thing than can be said definitively is that they have had financial ties to a network of shell companies that have been made use of in criminal schemes in the past and the economic activity of which seems devoid of logic, Postimees said.

It said that while such services could be used by criminals, it is also possible that these are ordinary offshore dealings the aim of which is to hide true beneficiaries or save on taxes.

Former police chief, interior minister and Center Party member Ain Seppik was also reluctant to comment on the activities of Vertimex and Multiforce. "I'm just a shareholder. Business activity is up to the board, and I am not up to speed on individual transactions," he told Postimees.