MONEY LAUNDERING….

Law-enforcement agencies say they are preparing 37 criminal cases involving money laundering. Targets include oil companies, alcohol producers, grain traders, even state-owned arms exporter Rosvooruzhenie. At the center of many of the cases are “banks”–electronic mail drops–chartered in Nauru, a Pacific island micro-state that turned to high finance when erosion made traditional guano mining a dangerously Naurophagic activity. A high official at the Russian Central Bank told the Washington Post last year that Russian banks sent $70 billion to banks in Nauru in 1998 alone.