Troika Back to Haunt Standard Bank Long After Lender’s Exit

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Standard Bank Group Ltd., which owned a minority stake in Moscow-based Troika Dialog from 2009 to 2012, said there’s no reason to believe any of its businesses were linked to alleged money laundering involving the Russian lender.

None of the entities that the Johannesburg-based company was involved in at the time have been mentioned in reports about the scandal, Alan Bedford-Shaw, the head of corporate development, said on a conference call Thursday. Standard Bank agreed to sell Troika to Sberbank PJSC in 2011 as part of a strategy switch to focus on Africa and exit emerging markets from Turkey to Brazil.

The Standard Bank representative was responding to a question from an analyst during its full-year results presentation as almost daily revelations from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and its partner news organizations widen the group of lenders involved in the scheme. The so-called Troika Laundromat was a financial network set up to help clients move money out of Russia and hide it.

The rejigged focus on Africa has paid off for Standard Bank, with a jump in earnings from its 20 operations outside of its home market helping to compensate for slower growth in South Africa. The stock fell 1.8 percent as of 12:19 p.m. in Johannesburg. That’s the biggest drop in the six-member FTSE/JSE Africa Banks Index hit by weakness in the rand and rising bond yields after South Africa’s current-account gap widened.

Source: Bloomberg Business News