From Utah, Secretive Help for a Russian Oligarch and His Jet [View all]

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Source: nytimes.







SALT LAKE CITY ...............

But in addition to its mom-and-pop customers, the bank has a lesser-known clientele that includes Russia’s richest oligarch, Leonid Mikhelson, an ally of the country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. The bank served as a stand-in so Mr. Mikhelson could secretly register a private jet in the United States, which requires American citizenship or residency.

The work on behalf of Mr. Mikhelson, whose gas company is under United States sanctions, is part of a discreet niche business for Bank of Utah that allows wealthy foreigners to legally obtain American registrations for their aircraft while shielding their identities from public view. The bank does this through trust accounts, in its own name, that take the place of owners on plane registration records.

Bank of Utah manages more than 1,390 aircraft trust accounts, most of them for foreigners, generating millions of dollars in fees and making it the second-largest holder of such accounts in the country. A trove of records leaked from an offshore law firm, Appleby, shows that the services offered by Bank of Utah, Wells Fargo and other American companies were sought after by rich jet owners in Russia, Africa and the Middle East.
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“There are serious national security risks when the F.A.A. approves an aircraft registration but does not have all the information, particularly if an aircraft is owned by a shell corporation or a foreign entity,” Representative Stephen F. Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, said when he introduced legislation in July that would require the F.A.A. to obtain and regularly update records on the ultimate owners behind aircraft trusts..................................

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/bank-of-utah-leonid-mikhelson.html

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