Banks, Crisis, Financial Services, Latvia, USA

The minister indicated that the Finance Ministry’s officials are also scheduled to meet with FinCEN representatives on Wednesday.

In Reizniece-Ozola’s words, the Finance Ministry wants to discuss with the FinCEN issues concerning the U.S. authority’s report on the Latvian financial sector and ABLV Bank. The ministry also plans to inform the American colleagues about Latvia’s completed and planned political initiatives and to provide an assessment of the Latvian financial sector.

“I hope that the talks will be practical and that we will discuss matters of further cooperation,” the finance minister said.

On Wednesday, the FinCEN representatives are also scheduled to meet with the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC), as well as the Association of Latvian Commercial Banks.

As reported, the Finance and Capital Market Commission, acting on the instructions from the European Central Bank (ECB), ordered ABLV Bank to stop all payments as of February 19 following a report by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of Treasury about ABLV Bank's involvement in international money laundering schemes and corruption. On February 24, the Finance and Capital Market Commission made a decision on occurrence of unavailability of deposits at ABLV Bank.

Shareholders of ABLV Bank at an extraordinary meeting last Monday made a decision to start the liquidation process in order to protect interests of its clients and creditors. ABLV Bank believes that in this way it will be possible to ensure active protection of its customers, the bank said in a statement.

The bank’s management has rejected all the allegations made in the FinCEN report and is determined to refute them.