Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion. Our thoughts are with all those who are so terribly affected and impacted. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, rightly criticised the actions of the Putin regime as unacceptable and illegal.

He stated that we need to be part of the response to that. I agree. Of course, how we respond is what matters. We are citizens of a neutral country which often punches way above its weight in international affairs. It is great to see the EU solidarity on this matter but, of course, accountability starts at home. It is about what we can do in the here and now and what changes we can effect. It is no secret that the IFSC is a major offshore financial centre for people linked to Putin. Gazprom, Rosneft and VTP in the state sector and major oligarch-controlled entities such as Alfa-Bank, EuroChem and Rusal are but a few of the companies involved. They all have special purpose vehicles located in the IFSC. They have no employees, offices or fixed assets and they pay no tax. Nevertheless, between 2005 and 2017, those shell companies funnelled €118 billion from the IFSC to Russia. Many of the companies that received those funds had been accused of serious wrongdoing. For example, Credit Bank of Moscow required a major bailout. Approximately 50% of its loans were to its management. Promsvyazbank had to be nationalised and its former owners were accused of being the ones buying their own debt. A quick look through some of the prospectuses for their bonds listed on the Irish Stock Exchange are striking. The section which lists risks includes reference to the fact that the measures implemented to prevent it from being used as a conduit for money laundering or terrorist financing may not be completely effective.

We know that following the imposition of sanctions in 2016 and 2017, some IFSC-based companies managed to raise finance on behalf of companies under those sanctions, as was well covered in the media over the past four years. Yet nothing happened. I have been raising this matter with the Government since 2020. In September 2020, I raised the matter with the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, who said it would be a matter for the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to address. I heard nothing thereafter. Shortly after I raised the matter with the Minister of State, one shell company connected to the now sanctioned bank Sovcombank issued a bond for €300 million. Its prospectus, listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, mentions risks from the sanctions imposed by foreign governments, including sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities.

In March 2021, the now sanctioned bank Alfa-Bank issued a bond of €1.2 billion. It also noted risks from economic sanctions. I raised this matter with the Minister for Finance when he was before the Joint Committee on Finance two months later and he told me he was not in a position to give an answer, which is understandable, but that he would write to me. He did not do so. I then wrote to him at the end of that month but I never received a reply. I am sorry, but that is not good enough.

We need to be a part of the response. I welcome what is being done and what has been done. We absolutely do need to be a part of the response. However, we need to ensure the IFSC is not used for the purposes of sanction-busting. Are we going to continue to allow anonymous company ownership which uses legal trustees because these non-transparent structures create significant risks of abuse? Because of the trustee ownership, it can be difficult to see-----

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