Ex-US Congressman’s Russian bank stripped of license

MOSCOW – A small Russian bank owned by former U.S. congressman Charles Taylor has been stripped of its license after allegedly breaking anti-money laundering rules.

Russia’s central bank says that Commercial Bank of Ivanovo committed “numerous” breaches of anti-money laundering legislation and inflated the value of its assets.

The central bank has appointed administrators and says more than 70 per cent of CBI’s lending was “low-quality loans.”

Taylor, a Republican widely considered a hard-line conservative, was a congressman from North Carolina between 1991 and 2007.

Central bank records show Taylor owns more than 80 per cent of CBI, a regional lender based in the textile-manufacturing city of Ivanovo, just over 150 miles (245 kilometres) north-east of Moscow.