A Financial Times investigation published Monday found that A7, a payments company created with backing from Russia’s state-owned Promsvyazbank, moved more than $6.9 billion through the global banking system using counterfeit invoices and a network of front companies. The scheme operated inside the Swift messaging network that Russia’s own banks were cut off from after the invasion of Ukraine, turning western correspondent accounts into a sanctions workaround for Russian importers.
The mechanism
A7’s model was straightforward on paper: front companies deposited cash at banks with Swift access, then used those accounts to pay overseas suppliers on behalf of Russian clients. The FT’s cache of internal A7 files shows the company obscured the true origin of the funds with what it described as an “industrial-scale forgery operation” producing fake invoices. Chinese bank accounts received a little more than half of the outbound flows, the report said.
The banks
Standard Chartered, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup all held accounts for A7 or its associated entities, according to the documents. Each bank pointed to its anti-money-laundering controls when contacted by the FT and declined further comment. The source does not specify whether any of the accounts remain open or whether the banks have filed suspicious activity reports tied to the flows.
The scale
Zach Tvarozna, a former U.S. government banking analyst who authored an earlier open-source report on A7, said the new material shows the operation is “much bigger than anyone had previously realized.” He added that the files “should make us think again about how hard it is to keep traditional correspondent banking clean.” The Kremlin has publicly promoted A7 as Russia’s leading cross-border import payments provider since the Swift cutoff.
What to watch
Separately, the U.S. Treasury is weighing higher thresholds for suspicious activity and currency transaction reports based on customer tenure, a move aimed at easing compliance burdens on community banks. The UK government last week said it would shift its AML focus from individual offenders to the technology-enabled networks that move illicit money. Neither development addresses the correspondent-banking layer that the A7 files expose.