He has completed higher education in law and is a citizen of three states: the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation. He worked in public institutions for short periods of time: a councilor in the Chisinau Municipal Council between 1999-2002 and a member of Parliament on behalf of Our Moldova Alliance, in 2009-2010. Otherwise, Mr. Platon is best known as a businessman and banker, with long connections to a number of Moldovan banks. Some of these he used to control directly as a shareholder, others he controlled secretly via intermediaries.

In 1996, when he was just 23 years old, Platon procured stock in Investprivatbank, for 800,000 lei. Ten years later this bank went bankrupt and filed for closure, getting soon stripped of its operating license.

In 2011 he used intermediaries to acquire a 30% stock in the state-controlled Moldovan Savings Bank (BEM) from Vladimir Plahotniuc. BEM was dried out of cash in a billion-dollar fraud in 2014, with Mr. Platon getting rid of this stock in favor of Ilan Shor, another controversial businessman.

At Moldindconbank, he rose to a deputy director in the management board, with his family holding about 4% of stock on paper. In fact, according to prosecutors, Mr. Platon was in control of the largest part of the stock, via intermediaries and front firms. Moldindconbank was involved during 2010-2014 in a major Russian money-laundering scheme, permitting to extract about 20 billion dollars via its accounts.

In 2011 Mr. Platon landed in Victoriabank too. Using intermediaries he acquired 27% of its stock from oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc. The businessman claimed all his shares had been sold in 2014 amid the National Bank’s pressures to vacate the shareholder rows.

According to law-enforcement officials, Mr. Platon owned almost 40% of Moldova-Agroindbank for short periods during 2013-2016, again via intermediaries. The same method applied to a number of companies - some of them migrating into his shopping basket from Plahotniuc’s portfolio. In an interview for RISE Moldova, Mr. Platon admitted he had transacted the insurance companies ASITO and Victoria Asigurari with Plahotniuc, as well as the National Hotel in the center of the Moldovan capital.

Veaceslav Platon was apprehended by Ukrainian police in Kiev, in 2016, hours after the Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutors had formally indicted him for a role in the 2014 bank fraud that had drained the financial system of Moldova out of one billion dollars. A swift and controversial extradition to Moldova followed and Platon was tried in Chisinau behind closed doors. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison for fraud and money laundering.

A court ordered the confiscation of more than 869 million lei in cash from Platon and all stocks in his possession: 63.89% at Moldindconbank; 83.12% at ASITO; 87.27% at Alliance Insurance Group; 100% at Broking-VM and Asito-Broker. He also lost land plots and buildings, and the money on the business accounts under his direct and indirect control.

In December 2019 Ukraine’s prosecutor-general requested the reverse extradition of Platon from his Moldovan counterpart, citing a major violation of extradition procedures back in 2016. The next day the Russian prosecutor-general filed a similar request, citing an investigation into suspected criminal activities of Mr. Platon, including his role in the Russian Laundromat. The Moldovan side waited for two months before turning down both requests.

It was in May 2020 when the new Moldovan prosecutor-general, Alexandr Stoianoglo, publicly announced that the trial of Mr. Platon was based on “totally forged evidence” for which he had served “an illegal condemnation and prison term.” A month later, on 15 June 2020 the businessman was released from prison and is now awaiting a re-trial. He is also expected to respond to a number of other charges that are still hanging over Mr. Platon.

A RISE Moldova investigation shows that in the period 2004 through 2016, Veaceslav Platon had been in possession of at least 16 passports: eight were Russian, six were Moldovan - including two diplomatic passports, and two were Ukrainian on the name of Vyacheslav Kobalyev, of which one was forged.