facebooktwittertelegramwhatsapp
copy short urlprintemail
+ A
A -
webmaster

Reuters
RIGA
One of Latvia biggest banks was forced to seek emergency help on Monday after it was destabilised by money laundering allegations, hours after the separate detention of the central bank governor on suspicion of soliciting bribes.
The financial sector in Latvia, a small eurozone state that shares a border with Russia, has come under wider scrutiny for being a conduit for illicit financial activities.
ABLV Bank, the country's third biggest lender, was on Monday ordered by the European Central Bank to stop all payments as its liquidity position had deteriorated sharply since the US Treasury accused it of money laundering.
The US Treasury sought sanctions against ABLV last week, accusing it of allowing clients to conduct business with North Korea, with bank executives and management bribing Latvian officials to cover up the activities.
"ABLV has institutionalized money laundering as a pillar of the bank's business practices,"the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FCEN) said in a statement linking some of the alleged activities to North Korea's ballistic missiles program.
The bank has said the US accusations were based on unfounded and misleading information.
The Latvian central bank said it had agreed to provide 97.5 million euros worth of funding to ABLV but details of the deal still need to be worked out and the bank has yet to receive the funding.
ABLV said it had ample collateral so was not seeking a bailout, just temporary liquidity support.
The economy in Latvia, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has boomed in recent years. Its commercial banking sector is dominated by Nordic banks alongside a number of privately-owned local lenders.
In its document detailing the allegations against ABLV, the FCEN said the reliance of the Latvian banking system on non-resident deposits for capital exposed it to increased illicit finance risk. It said such deposits amounted to roughly $13 billion.
"Non-resident banking in Latvia allows offshore companies, including shell companies, to hold accounts and transact through Latvian banks,"it said, adding criminal groups and cor rupt officials may use such schemes to hide true beneficiaries or create fraudulent business transactions.
"(Former Soviet Union) actors often transfer their capital via Latvia, frequently through complex and interconnected legal structures, to various banking locales in order to reduce scrutiny of transactions and lower the transactions'risk rating."
In a separate development, Latvia's anti-corruption authority said it had detained central bank governor Ilmars Rimsevics, an ECB policymaker, over the weekend for demanding a bribe.
It said its investigation was not connected to the probe into ABLV.
"(Rimsevics'arrest)... is about demanding a bribe of no less than 100,000 euros,"Jekabs Straume, the head of Latvia's Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau told reporters at a news conference.
copy short url   Copy
20/02/2018
530