14-Year-Old Armenian Girl Had Bank Account Opened at Credit Suisse with Over $100 Million Years Later

The Swiss banking system is well-known for its secrecy. Sometimes, bank accounts opened in Switzerland are not in the names of their actual owners. How can it be explained that a bank account belonging to a citizen of Armenia had at least 106 million Swiss francs?

In 1997, Armenian citizen Nina Minasyan was just 14 years old when a bank account was opened in her name in Switzerland. By 2013, the account held several tens of millions of Swiss francs. This is reported by Hetq.

Nina Minasyan's work history, the fact that she has no business, and her family circumstances raise a number of questions. How could this Armenian citizen have accumulated such wealth? Whose money does it actually belong to? Is the real owner of this wealth using Minasyan's name to hide their assets?

Information about Minasyan's bank account was included in the Credit Suisse data leak. The data was provided to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source, and the paper shared this information with Hetq and dozens of other investigative journalists as part of the cross-border journalistic investigation titled Suisse Secrets. Under investigation are dubious figures from around the world - criminals, former officials, and oligarchs - who exploited Swiss banking secrecy laws to hide their millions in banks in Switzerland.

However, as our investigation shows, not every major account is connected to a well-known name. Opening businesses in the names of reliable persons (proxy), as well as establishing offshore accounts, are just some of the many ways wealth can be concealed. This method has been persistently employed by various officials and oligarchs in Armenia. Formally, they have no relation to the given business or large sums of money, but in practice, they are the true owners.

Although we found no substantial evidence during our investigation that Minasyan is a proxy for someone else, the lack of justification for her immense wealth raises the question of whether her name is being used to obscure a third party's identity. In a developing country like Armenia, where deep economic and social inequalities exist, such inexplicable wealth becomes a matter of public interest.

The leaked data regarding bank accounts lists Nina Minasyan's name, last name, and date of birth, allowing us to locate Minasyan based on public data. In Armenia, there is only one person with that last name and date of birth.

No one lives in the apartment where Nina Minasyan is registered with her parents and brother. Neighbors told us that they are in Moscow.

Nina Minasyan currently resides in the Swiss city of Bern and works for a telecommunications services company called Comfone. Months ago, when we had just begun our investigation, Minasyan's photo and a short interview discussing her move to Switzerland were posted on Comfone's website. However, this information has now been removed from the site.

Nina Minasyan is only active on LinkedIn, registered as an employee of VivaCell-MTS. The company informed us that Minasyan has not worked there since 2014. Her former colleagues describe her as reserved, non-communicative, and state that none of them have kept in touch with her.

Our colleague from Süddeutsche Zeitung contacted Minasyan through LinkedIn. She agreed to answer questions regarding the source of the money in her bank account and requested that they be sent in writing. On January 26 of this year, our colleague sent the questions, but there was no response.

Some time later, we called Comfone and requested to connect us with Nina Minasyan. The operator stated that Nina did not want to speak with us and provided that our questions could be emailed to her.

We sent the questions to Minasyan. We did not receive any response. Over the course of a month, we sent her several messages, none of which she answered. Minasyan even blocked our email addresses.

In the meantime, we investigated her family and found no justification for her wealth. A neighbor of their building told us that at times she would have coffee with Minasyan’s mother, Tsoghiq Zakaryan. She was surprised to learn that Nina is in Switzerland, saying that Tsoghiq often came to their home but never mentioned that her daughter lives in Switzerland.

Tsoghiq Zakaryan worked for 22 years at the State Property Management Committee. She had been the head of the committee's internal audit division until 2021. Employees speaking about her noted that she was hardly close with anyone. In 2021, she was laid off from work, and none of the committee's employees have information about her or maintain contact.

In Yerevan, we found Nina Minasyan's uncle, Tigran Zakaryan. He was surprised that Nina could have so much money, stating that he does not believe it, as they cannot imagine such a thing given their means, and also mentioned that he has no contact with Nina at all and rarely connects with Tsoghiq.

Nina's father, Sanasar Minasyan, is a migrant worker and drives in Moscow. Meanwhile, Nina's brother, Sargis Minasyan, does not appear to be working anywhere according to our information.

On April 3, we received a message from Tsoghiq Zakaryan, asking us to contact her. We called her Russian number. Nina’s mother was aware that we had met with her brother and a neighbor. Tsoghiq Zakaryan stated that her daughter does not have that much money in the bank and labeled our information as false. Nina's brother, Sargis, who also participated in the conversation, said that his sister did not respond to our messages thinking that hackers were writing to her.

We asked Tsoghiq to convey to Minasyan that she should reach out to us and personally respond to our questions or via email. A few days later, Nina Minasyan replied to our German colleague on LinkedIn.

Essentially, she states that she considers our information to be false and insists that she has no connection to that money.

Below we present her response in English and translated into Armenian. At the same time, we had approached Credit Suisse and asked whether they had verified the source of Nina Minasyan's funds. The bank provided its standard response that they check the source of funds when opening an account and that the remainder is a banking secret.

Nina Minasyan was likely already aware of our inquiry to the bank and may have reached out to the bank. The bank knows that the leaked data does not include everything that Minasyan was demanding in her response to us. It is evident that Nina answered our questions after consulting with the bank and lawyers.

It should be noted that the investigation into Credit Suisse has raised considerable noise in Switzerland, becoming a major topic of discussion for a time. We had also sent an inquiry to the Central Bank of Armenia, indicating that there are large sums in Nina Minasyan’s bank account at Credit Suisse and we suspect it may have been opened for money laundering purposes. We asked whether there had been transfers from Armenian banks to Nina Minasyan’s Swiss bank account, and conversely, whether she had made transfers from the Swiss bank to Armenian banks. The Central Bank responded that the requested information is a bank secret.