Russia’s federal customs service said on Thursday it had sued Bank of New York Co. and was seeking $22.5 billion in damages related to alleged money laundering in the late-1990s, Reuters reports.
From 1996 to 1999, bank employees helped to create a “system through which conditions were made for companies and Russian banks to not make the proper payments, thus inflicting a loss against the Russian Federation,” Maxim Smal, a lawyer who said he works on behalf of the Russian agency, said in a telephone interview.