A small Russian bank owned by former U.S. congressman Charles Taylor has been stripped of its license after allegedly breaking anti-money laundering rules.
Russia’s central bank says that Commercial Bank of Ivanovo committed “numerous” breaches of anti-money laundering legislation and inflated the value of its assets.
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The central bank has appointed administrators and says more than 70 percent of CBI’s lending was “low-quality loans.”
Taylor, a Republican widely considered a hard-line conservative, was a congressman from North Carolina between 1991 and 2007.
Central bank records show Taylor owns more than 80 percent of CBI, a regional lender based in the textile-manufacturing city of Ivanovo, just over 150 miles (245 kilometers) north-east of Moscow.