BUSTED: Russian bank owned by ex-GOP congressman loses license over money-laundering scheme

A Russian bank that is owned by former Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-NC) has lost its license after being implicated in a money-laundering scheme.

Bloomberg reports that Russia's central bank this week pulled the license for the Commercial Bank of Ivanovo because it regularly broke rules against money laundering. In addition to money laundering, the bank was also accused of artificially inflate the size of its capital using assorted "schemes."

"Suspect Russian cash has caught up several lenders in northern Europe, with Swedbank AB’s head Birgitte Bonnesen the latest executive to lose her job over allegations her bank was involved in a $230 billion Danske Bank A/S laundering scandal," writes Bloomberg. "In Russia, the central bank has purged more than 40 percent of the country’s lenders since 2013 under Governor Elvira Nabiullina in an attempt to clean up the financial sector and stem suspicious transactions."

Taylor, who left Congress in 2007, acquired an 80 percent stake in the Ivanovo bank in 2003 and he financed a series of construction projects in and around Ivanovo starting in the 1990s.