Greece’s Money Laundering Authority is investigating suspicious money transfers from abroad to the individual accounts of monks on Mount Athos.
The case has been investigated since 2021 and the procedure has sped up due to Russia’s invasion in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia’s natural and those linked to the Kremlin.
According to the investigation and unnamed sources, the Kremlin has always maintained close ties with the Athonite state, and at least 20 transactions that have been flagged over the last twelve months as suspicious.
The transactions concern the movement of large sums of money from banks and foreign money transfer companies, into the accounts of monasteries that in the recent past have received visits from high-ranking Russian officials.
Sums amounting to hundreds of thousands of euros have also been deposited in the individual monks’ accounts on Mount Athos.
In one case, there was a transfer of more than a million euros , but the investigation concluded that the money was intended to finance a mission in Africa, Kathimerini reported.
The majority of the money deposited in the monks’ accounts does not come from persons for whom war-related sanctions have been in force since last February.
Greece’s Money Laundering Authority is looking into the investments of the wealthy Russians making transactions to determine whether they have chosen to take their money out of Russia with the help of monks from Mount Athos in order to save their funds in the event of the collapse of their country’s financial institutions, or the freezing of their funds by the Kremlin due to the war.
A number of Russians have also reportedly expressed interest in buying property in Greece since the war in Ukraine.
“No evidence has emerged capable of fully confirming information that the transactions are part of a broader, organized effort to penetrate Russia’s hold on Mount Athos,” a source said.
“This effort has been expressed mainly through business and/or political circles,” he adds, referring to recent indications by US intelligence agencies of a transfer from Russia of $300 million to parties and politicians in the period from 2014 onwards.”
Apart from the Russian-origin funds, several of the money deposits to Mount Athos monks under the Laundering Authority’s scrutiny have been made by people from Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
