After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Riga has come a long way to becoming a financial center. Currently, the volume of transactions through the banks of Latvia reaches 1% of the total turnover of dollars in the world. By the spring of 2016, Z / Yen Group included Riga in the ranking of the world’s largest financial centers Global Financial Centers Index (GFCI), placing it on the 71st position.
Six months later, the Latvian capital rose to 52nd place. In 2017, among the most valuable companies in the republic, most were from the financial sector. For the year, Latvian banks increased their total cost by 16%. It would seem that everything points to the confident development of the financial system. And local mass media wrote that in the next few years the number of banks in the country could increase from 22 to 100. Unexpectedly, FinCEN noted in its statement that “until 2017 the leaders of the ABLV bank bribed officials in Latvia, trying to prevent legal actions directed against them and to weaken threats to their actions of high risk.” The head of the Latvian Central Bank Ilmar Rimshevich was accused of corruption. On Saturday, February 17, he was detained and later released on bail.
Experts called the situation unprecedented. In their opinion, the reputation of the republic was spoiled so much that the country had every chance to become an outcast in the market of international banking services. But Washington, through which, in fact, a scandal broke out, try to support the ally morally. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert expressed confidence last Friday that the government of Latvia would take measures to ensure confidence in the banking and financial sectors.
After ABLV Bank took decisions on the procedure for self-liquidation, the labor relations with 295 employees were terminated. However, according to experts, this was not the end of the fight against the so-called “dirty money”, but only the beginning. Another 10-12 banks are waiting for their turn, because many of them do not deal with customer service, but are engaged in investments. All these organizations have been formally tested, however, dues to the fact that US banks want to prohibit the world from settling in dollars and make all payments in this currency go only through financial and credit institutions of the United States, these Latvian may be expected to repeat the situation with ABLV Bank.
