Banks, Crime, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Risk management, USA

Ints Kuzis. Photo: BC.

He said that a criminal procedure had to be launched in order to probe facts listed in the bank’s application. At the same time, the criminal procedure has been launched on the fact and not against any persons.

ABLV Bank’s spokesman Arturs Eglitis told that the criminal procedure has been launched at the request of the bank dated with February 14, 2018 where the bank asked to probe spreading of false information about the bank and the Latvian financial system.

"As the bank has no rights and authority to refute the slanderous information, the bank turned to the police," said Eglitis.

He said that the bank believes that the report of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of Treasury implicating Latvia’s ABLV Bank in money laundering schemes is based on false information and its authors have not taken into consideration the bank’s AML/CFT efforts of the past two years.

"Spreading of such false information made a considerable and irreversible damage to the bank’s reputation and the financial system in general. We presume that FinCEN has been misinformed, they had been given false, slandering, incomplete information about our bank and the Latvian financial system in general," said Eglitis.

As reported, the Latvian financial regulator, 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, 2018 following a report by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury about ABLV Bank's involvement in international money laundering schemes and corruption. On February 24, 2018, the Finance and Capital Market Commission found an occurrence of unavailability of deposits at ABLV Bank.

Shareholders of ABLV Bank decided in February 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.

At the end of September 2017, ABLV Bank was the third largest bank in Latvia by assets. The bank's majority shareholders Olegs Fils, Ernests Bernis and Nika Berne own, directly and indirectly, 87.03% of the bank's share capital.