Banks, Financial Services, Latvia, USA

A delegation of the FKTK administration and experts last week made a working visit to the US to meet with FinCEN representatives to discuss the situation in the Latvian financial sector and progress of ABLV Bank’s self-liquidation supervised by the financial watchdog.

In the process of controlled self-liquidation of ABLV Bank, FKTK is cooperating with FinCEN to ensure regular information exchange on the current events and agree on further steps.

“We have made sure that there are no significant obstacles and we can move forward in the liquidation process in line with the model approved by FKTK,” said FKTK head Peters Putnins.

As reported, the Finance and Capital Market Commission, acting on the instructions from the European Central Bank, 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, the Finance and Capital Market Commission found an occurrence of unavailability of deposits at ABLV Bank.

Shareholders of ABLV Bank decided in February 2018 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.