A RUSSIAN teenager who was studying at an independent boarding school in Britain has had her bank account frozen on suspicion of money laundering.

Tamara Platash, 18, who until last summer was a pupil at Sherborne school for girls in Dorset, was studying for A-levels when she and her mother were questioned by officers over the payment of more than £300,000 into her bank account from sources in China and Hong Kong.

When Platash — described as attractive, assertive and “a model pupil” — allegedly tried to transfer £200,000 back to an account in China, police were alerted and immediately froze the money.

Dorset police questioned Irina, Platash’s mother, when she flew to Britain at the end of the summer term. Police say seven cash sums totalling £303,730 were deposited in Platash’s account over five months.

Both she and her mother, who are believed to be in Russia, are being investigated by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), which last week said it believed “the funds are linked to money laundering”. The police have dropped their inquiries for lack of evidence.

“We could not prove where exactly the money had come from or where it was going,” said Detective Sergeant Andrew Strong of Dorset police. “We might have been able to make more progress if we had been given more access to information in both China and Russia.”

The ARA, a government agency that pursues cases through the civil courts, has obtained a High Court order that allowed it to keep Platash’s account frozen.

The agency plans to present its full case to the High Court in the near future.

The burden of proof is lower in a civil court than at a criminal hearing and a judge will determine, on the balance of probabilities, whether the money is the proceeds of crime.

Jane Earl, director of the ARA, said: “So far, the respondents have not put forward a convincing explanation of how these funds were acquired.”

Platash is understood to be from Pyatigorsk, a city at the foot of the Caucasus mountains in the Stavropol region of southern Russia. Her mother is believed to run a travel business in the city.

Platash was taking three A-levels at Sherborne, which has about 450 pupils, and completed her studies last summer. Old girls of the £21,000-a-year school, founded in 1899, include Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, the society figure. It is ranked 109th in The Sunday Times Parent Power league table of independent schools.

While at Sherborne, where she was a member of Mulliner house, Platash was under the care of a company that specialises in acting as guardians for overseas pupils in Britain.

Although Sherborne school and friends of Platash knew she had been questioned by police, they were shocked when they heard of the allegations against her. One said: “She was a lovely girl; she did not get into trouble at all. She got very good grades.”

Martyn Steer, the bursar at Sherborne, said: “Tamara was a model pupil who never gave us any cause for concern. She always held her own. We were aware that Dorset police questioned her, but we had no knowledge of her private affairs.”

Fellow pupils remember Platash as an attractive and assertive young woman. Alice Cockerell, 18, from Somerset, said: “I did theology with her, and she would get in these fierce debates. Everyone in the school knew who she was, there used to be a few boys that would trail around after her.”

In the students’ school year book for 2005, Platash is mentioned by contemporaries as the first who would “make a million”. She writes that her characteristics include “stilettoes, long dark hair and confidence” and believes she will become Russia’s first female president.

She gives her favourite quotation as “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”, the closing line delivered by Clark Gable playing Rhett Butler in the film Gone with the Wind.

A source close to the Platash family said the money in Tamara’s account may have come from legitimate sources in China, as her mother owns businesses in that country. Platash is believed to have spent the summer in China working as a translator.

Neither she nor her mother could be reached for comment this weekend.

As part of their efforts to reduce money laundering by terrorist groups and criminal gangs, banks are obliged to inform the authorities of any transactions involving customers that may be suspicious.

For example, if an exceptionally large payment is made into an account where there is normally little activity, this may trigger an investigation.

The bank informs the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), which then alerts local police to investigate.

In 2003, the NCIS received more than 100,000 suspicious activity reports from banks and other financial bodies.

If the police are unable to find any evidence warranting a full criminal investigation, cases are passed to the ARA. Many are dropped.

Out of a total of 103 referred to the ARA in 2004, the agency decided to carry out full investigations into only 51. In six cases freezing orders were issued affecting assets worth £1.4m.

However, there have been frequent complaints that the money-laundering regulations impose huge extra bureaucracy on banks and customers and trigger thousands of unnecessary alerts while failing to counter criminal activity.

According to one estimate issued earlier this year, just £46m out of a total of £250 billion of laundered money has been recovered in Britain over the past 10 years.

Additional reporting: Simon Trump and Anna Mikhailova

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