Controversial businessman Vyacheslav Platon, who was convicted in Russia for bank fraud together with Volodymyr Plahotniuk, and is also under criminal investigation in the Republic of Moldova – a country he left in 2021, but whose politics he would like to participate in – said. from London, where he found refuge, how he made his first million dollars at the age of only 20.

In January 2024, Platon announced that he plans to join the politics of the Republic of Moldova – either he will create a party or “take over” an already existing one. “We are analyzing several options,” he told Ziarul de Gardă. At the same time, he stated that he has no intention of returning to the country where he has been under investigation in several criminal cases for several years.

Last year, a court in Moscow sentenced Vyacheslav Platon, who also has Russian citizenship, to 20 years in a high-security prison in the so-called “laundry” case. He was found guilty of illegally withdrawing foreign currency from the Russian Federation in the amount of more than 126 billion rubles. The case was considered in the absence of Platon, who is being prosecuted by an international court. Vyacheslav Platon was fined 2.5 million rubles, which is equivalent to approximately 28 thousand dollars. The court also decided to confiscate Plato’s property in favor of the state.

According to the data, Platon, together with the former leader of the Democratic Party of Moldova (DPM) Volodymyr Plahotniuk and Oleksandr Korkin, created a criminal organization to withdraw money from Russia, which was then “laundered” through the banks of the Republic of Moldova. The total amount of transactions exceeded 126 billion Russian rubles.

Vyacheslav Platon, a refugee in London, said in an interview with journalist Dorin Galben that he is now a millionaire – “a millionaire by assets” and at the same time he will have money “on his account”, he said.

Platon, who is 51 years old, said that he earned his first million dollars in Ukraine when he was 20-21 years old. “We won the first million – we are engaged in speculation, we won the first million in Ukraine on the sale of passenger cars,” he said, quoted by NewsMaker. When asked how “a 20-21-year-old guy makes a million dollars in sales,” he said: “Back then, 20-21-year-old guys were already running banks in Russia and running steel plants. Such were the times. (…) I was a little cheeky compared to the guys who were very serious back then and rose quickly. (…) Then it was very simple, bought here, sold there. Finished. It didn’t take a genius brain for that.” He added that in 2013-2014 her assets reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

He noted that in 2012, his declared wealth amounted to more than 60 million dollars. “In truth, my destiny was much greater,” Plato admitted. According to him, after his adventures with justice – at one point he ended up in prison – he would lose 90% of that.

Vyacheslav Platon is accused in three criminal cases pending before the court in the Republic of Moldova, two – for particularly large-scale fraud and one – for forgery of bank cards. In 2016, the Chisinau court sentenced Vyacheslav Platon to 12 years in prison for attempted fraud and corruption of officers of the Panther special-purpose unit. Four years later, in 2020, the Court of Appeal of Chisinau overturned the verdict and referred the case for retrial. After several postponements, the case was taken for examination from scratch. Now the review is taking place in the absence of Platon, who left the Republic of Moldova in the summer of 2021.

“I didn’t earn the money I earned in Moldova. We simply lost them in Moldova,” said the businessman. He would make the most money in Russia, in the field of “banking, insurance and speculation.”

Answering the question where he has money now, Platon noted that he “started a new business” in the field of “currency speculation, gold, reinsurance”, including in Great Britain.

He stated that he currently does not have any business in the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, or Russia, and that he will carry out his activities “in Europe, Asia.”

An activist of Vyacheslav Platon’s project with pensioners, through which he provided them with “help” with money, told Ziarul de Gardă in January that the oligarch wants to create a political party and uses tactics similar to Shor Ilan, another fugitive oligarch convicted in the Republic Moldova is considered one of the levers with which Moscow wants to destabilize Moldova.

(news.ro)