Five Monaco Bankers Fined in Mafia-Linked Money Laundering Case

Five bankers in Monaco have been fined after being convicted for their roles in a money laundering scheme linked to an Italian mafia operation. Two of the bankers received suspended prison sentences and were fined €10,000 each for helping launder millions in cash.

The case in Monaco is part of a broader investigation in Italy into the so-called Mafia Capitale. The Monte Carlo element of the case involved two Italians who regularly traveled to the city-state to deliver bags of cash.

Among those convicted were Alexandre Balga, an official at Banque Havilland, and Nicolas Gelso, who worked at CMB Monaco, a unit of Mediobanca SpA. Both Balga and Gelso were handed suspended prison sentences.

Another part of the Monaco prosecution focused on four bankers accused of failing to report these cash transactions as suspicious. Three of them, including two who worked for Edmond de Rothschild at the time of the offenses, were convicted and fined between €5,000 and €7,000.

However, the court cleared the highest-profile banker in the case, Patrick Dauguet, the current CEO of Havilland Monaco.

The banks themselves were not implicated in the charges.

Two Italian businessmen, Fabrizio Amore and Maurizio Fratti, were also sentenced to one year in prison, with six months suspended, and fined €500,000.

Attorneys representing Amore and Gelso have announced plans to appeal the verdicts. Other defense lawyers for the remaining defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Amore had previously been linked to the Italian police investigation as a suspect in 2015, but his defense team pointed out that this did not result in any conviction. In a statement, his attorneys, William Julié, Yann Lajoux, and Giorgio Martellino, argued, “We consider that no guilty verdict should have been reached in Monaco for the main reason that money laundering is a secondary offense that requires our client was convicted in Italy in the first place, which is not the case.”

In addition to the convicted bankers, the court found two Frenchmen, Armand and Luc Pastorel, guilty of using a local administrator to move around €12 million in cash by funneling profits from their businesses. Their legal teams did not immediately provide comments.

Monaco has historically been viewed as lenient on money laundering, with a reputation for weak investigations and prosecutions. This led to the city-state being added to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list” earlier this year.

In response, Monaco has passed new laws, with local authorities now aiming to demonstrate their ability to combat illegal financial activities effectively.

By fLEXI tEAM