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A private banker gave false statements to help a fraudster dodge compliance checks and launder proceeds from a €100 million investment scam perpetrated against a European shipping firm in 2011, a court in London heard.

Othman Louanjli, 40, a French national and former relationship manager at Liechtensteinische Landesbank, or LLB, in the United Arab Emirates, went on trial at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday on suspicion of providing “dishonest assistance” to Luis Nobre, a Portuguese money launderer convicted three years ago for his role in the scheme.

“This case is about how the defendant, Othman Louanjli, helped Luis Nobre get control of this money,” David Durose, an attorney with Furnival Chambers in London, told the jury as he opened the case for the prosecution.

The court heard that in mid-2011, Allseas, a shipping company headquartered in Switzerland and owned by Dutch engineer and billionaire Edward Hereema, planned to invest €100 million to raise capital for the construction of a new ship designed to remove offshore oil rigs.

Allseas executives first sought investment advice from former employees before unwittingly linking up with “a gang of fraudsters” led by 64-year-old Polish-Canadian national Marek Rejniak, whose whereabouts are unknown to U.K. authorities, the court heard.

“The atmosphere created was that Allseas were being given access to secret and lucrative forms of investment and trading … including through a mysterious entity known as the House of Aragon, that was said to have links to the Vatican,” Durose said.

Allseas was promised that it could double its investment within a month and rake in as much as €1.2 billion in three years but “had to move fast.”

With the agreement of senior Allseas employees in hand, the fraudsters created a Maltese entity, Allseas Group Limited, to hold the funds in custody at Bank of Valetta, Malta’s oldest lender. In October 2011, a second Maltese company, Allied Investment Corporation Limited, or AIC, opened an account at the same bank to facilitate trading, the court heard.

Allseas agreed that month to loan AIC the entire $100 million with the ostensible purpose of allowing Rejnkaik to access the funds quickly if opportunities for investment arose.

A door shuts…

Nobre, the Portuguese money launderer, immediately attempted to transfer the entire sum to LLB in Switzerland, where he had already opened a corporate account with the assistance of Louanjli, then a relationship manager at the bank’s branch in Abu Dhabi.

But LLB staff by that point had already suspended the Swiss account for inactivity, and, three days after the transfer, met with Louanjli in Zurich to discuss their “real concerns” over the source of the funds and the bank’s relationship with Nobre, the court heard.

At the meeting, Marcel Vuille, a senior compliance officer at LLB’s Swiss affiliate, questioned why his branch had not been told of the transfer ahead of time, and how AIC, a firm with no collateral and no history of managing assets, managed to gain control of such a vast sum.

Nobre had a “most limited” business relationship with LLB and underwent only “the most rudimentary” due-diligence checks, said Vuille, who voiced particular concern over the Portuguese national’s request to have $1.5 million immediately transferred to a private account in his name after the $100 million arrived.

“It smacked of an investment fraud, which, of course, it was,” Durose, for the prosecution, told jurors Tuesday.

LLB transmitted the money back to Bank of Valletta, according to the prosecution, and Vuille recommended that his bank abstain from further business with Nobre.

A window opens…

After failing to access the funds in Switzerland and after a second unsuccessful attempt at Andbanc in Andorra, Nobre turned to the U.K. and Notable Services, a law firm with which he had formed a relationship the year prior by posing as an investor interested in buying a £37 million property in London.

The funds siphoned from Allseas arrived in Notable Services’ account at Barclays on Nov. 2, 2011, Durose told jurors. The following day, in a conference call with Notable Services, Louanjli said he had known the Portuguese national “for a long time,” and that LLB had already vetted him and confirmed the legitimacy of his funds.

He also represented that the money had been sent from LLB to the Maltese lender.

“The first two of these [statements] was false and the third was completely misleading,” Durose told the jury. “Louanjli was present at the meeting [with LLB compliance officers], was fully engaged in the discussion and would have been in no doubt that this was not true, that in fact the bank had significant doubts about whether the money was legitimate.”

After taking advice from another law firm and the U.K. Law Society, Notable Services refused to follow Nobre’s instructions for disbursing the funds absent further documentary justification for the requested transfers from its account at Barclays and a written affidavit from Louanjli confirming that the statements he had made during their earlier teleconference were true.

Louanjli offered instead to travel to London to sign the affidavit in person. That trip never occurred, Nobre later told Notable Services, because the banker “missed his flight” out of Abu Dhabi.

Louanjli then emailed the law firm much narrower representations, namely that Nobre was a “well known” client of LLB and had been vetted during the onboarding process.

Partially satisfied with that explanation, Notable Services subsequently transferred €16 million as instructed by Nobre.

The convicted money launderer managed to funnel around €12 million into personal and corporate accounts in the U.K., UAE and Switzerland before Barclays grew suspicious of the transactions and froze what was left of the funds in Notable Services’ account, the court heard.

Almost €1 million ended up in an account at Emirates Bank held by Renaissance Ltd, a company controlled by Louanjli’s friend, Sebastian Elbied, a banker with Barclays Capital in Paris who had introduced him to Nobre that year, Durose said.

€560,000 in “loan” payments then arrived in a corporate account at Barclays held by Bridge Ltd, which Louanjli allegedly controlled.

Nobre was sentenced to 14 years in prison in February 2016. In October 2017, the U.K. High Court declared LLB liable for the fraud perpetrated against Allseas.

Louanjli, who denies the charges, remains in the United Arab Emirates. The trial continues.

Contact Koos Couvée at kcouvee@acams.org