Four ex-bankers face Swiss trial over accounts ‘linked to Putin’

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, presents a medal to Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin (Ivan Sekretarev, Pool/AP)

Four former bankers with the Swiss affiliate of a major Russian bank have gone on trial over allegations that they did not properly check accounts opened in the name of a Russian cellist with ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The one-day trial in Zurich district court stems from information about secretive financial flows revealed in the Panama Papers leaks in 2016 that implicated Mr Putin’s childhood friend Sergei Roldugin.