The Russian attack on Ukraine and the unethical linkage with the international financial system

At the end of World War II, I was a small kid. It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized that curling up into a ball under a piece of wood would not have saved any of us from the tools of warfare.

This memory is echoing in my brain now that Russia has invaded Ukraine.

We all have various views of the conflict where tweets, livestreams, and TikToks tell the stories of air strikes, soldiers, families, and international politics.

We thought we were dealing with a “chess player”, not a war criminal. We believed he was playing by the rules and not betting his own. We figured he just wanted respect, not submission. We hoped that the dirty business of secret service obstruction was only his past and now we know: It should also be his future. Lots of misconceptions about Vladimir Putin, the man who brought the bomb alarm over Kiev and Chernobyl, and the horror of the coldest of all Cold Wars like a gang leader about the shocked world. The Russian President may feel like Lenin. He’s nothing more than a militiaman with a penchant for paranoia.

The truly dramatic is the end of the “detente”, the détente between states, the “peace dividend”. The morality of disarmament is fading away, like belief in globalization before it. You pull the curtain aside and see land grabbing, new mercantilism and violence.

The asymmetry in the Ukraine war is that some have guns and others just words. US President Joe Biden spoke of “strong” sanctions, four major Russian banks will be cut off from the US financial system, exports to the evil empire will be restricted and other individuals from Putin’s environment will be excluded. Warmonger Putin must become a “pariah on the world stage”.

The EU also passed similar sanctions - in the financial sector, in transport and in visa policy. The shares of Putin’s state-owned companies are no longer traded in the EU, and there are no longer any spare parts from Europe for Russian aircraft.

In a move that sunk stocks, spiked oil prices and dismayed the world, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine before dawn on Thursday. What is happening in Ukraine may seem far away for us, but make no mistake, Russia’s actions have global implications, including for the Philippines. Russian President Vladimir Putin says his aim is to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine”, a cryptic remark that has sent chills down many spines, including mine.

Recent investigations have also made it clear that kleptocrats have taken advantage of lax regulations and opaqueness in the financial system to lay the groundwork for the conflict we’re seeing today. They use banks not only to launder money and their reputation, but also to build power. Leading democracies let them get away with it.

For instance, the 2020 FinCEN Files investigation revealed several Russian oligarchs – including those with close ties to Putin – involved in suspicious activities and with unchecked access to the international financial system. 

Just take businessmen Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, known childhood friends of Putin, as an example. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian state commissioned Rotenberg’s company to construct a bridge from mainland Russia to Crimea. 

Despite being placed under sanctions, kleptocrats continue to easily move funds, buy assets and invest in crucial sectors of the economy across the globe. Anonymous companies and a criminal services industry offer bank accounts, luxury mansions and goods and even citizenship in exchange for fatty investments.

We express our solidarity with the people of Ukraine and with Russian citizens risking their lives to speak out against war. We call on leading economies to address the corruption exacerbating this conflict and stop the flows of money funding corrupt Russian officials and their attacks on the people of Ukraine.

The grave situation in Ukraine clearly shows that the abuse of the financial system – along with the complicity of financial institutions like banks – leads to deadly consequences for people around the world, and it must end now. Your responses would be welcome; contact me at [email protected]