It is one of the jewels of Gold Coast. Not far from Chassagne-Montrachet there is a castle built from the 12th century. Restored in the 19th century, the fortress of La Rochepot could have been visited a few years ago. Before the case, which is on trial Monday at Nancy.
There the process of the obscure financing of the purchase of this castle began. Seven people, including four Ukrainians, will have to explain themselves for two weeks about a particularly opaque financial deal. The president, Brigitte Roux, began by recalling the international context in which this process is taking place, asking the various parties to “leave all other concerns out of the classroom” to focus “on the law”, even if all have “current affairs in mind. ” in Ukraine.
The seven defendants, including four Ukrainians, a French lawyer and a Moldovan citizen, are accused of money laundering in an organized gang for having bought the castle, the hotel in the village of Côte-d’Or and a Rolls Royce in 2015, for more than three million euros, with the funds of a scam committed in Ukraine in 2015, according to the indictment.
A buyer who pretends to be dead
The main defendant, Dmitri Malinovsky, sleeveless gray vest, thin glasses, dyed hair and combed back, allegedly extracted more than 12 million euros from a fertilizer company (Dreymoor) whose head office is in Singapore and whose majority shareholder is a citizen Russian. The company is a civil party. Malinovsky then pretended to be dead in Ukraine and lived in France “under false identities”.
According to the presumed facts read by the president, the funds for the purchase of the castle were made available by one of the defendants, Olga Kalina, former lover of Dmitri Malinovsky, who was then reimbursed to her account in Swiss from five offshore companies with bank accounts in Latvia It’s inside Estonia. This is contested by Olga Kalina’s lawyer, Me Stéphane Bonifassi.
Maître Charlotte Plantin, who defends the Dreymoor company, claims to have “reconstituted” the money laundering circuit, which establishes a link between her client’s funds and those used to purchase the castle.
First defendant questioned, Alexandru Arman, a Moldovan citizen who arrived in France in January 2015, explained to the court that he had worked as a driver for Dmitri Malinovsky, without an employment contract and paid in cash. He only knew his boss by name “Rodolphe”. This was denied by Malinovsky, who claimed he introduced himself as “Dmitri” when he hired Arman in May 2015.
The castle was seized in 2018
Arman then becomes manager in 2016 of the SARL that deals with the tourist exploitation of the castle: for him it is Malinovsky who gives him “instructions” via a dedicated telephone, and asks him to pay for personal expenses – including the notes of luxury hotels and restaurants where he went with Olga Kalina, then his mistress – with the money from the castle chest. He denied allegations by the main defendant, who has always denied being the owner of the premises.
Seized by justice in 2018, La Rochepot castle has since been closed and empty: the furniture was sold at an auction in Beaune last year. A “heartbreak” for the inhabitants of this Côte-d’Or commune, which has seen around 30,000 tourists a year thanks to the castle.
