Every year, Latvian banks are caught organizing massive crimes. And every year, Latvian officials promise to clean-up the sector but don’t really do anything. That’s why the same money-laundering crooks have been active in Latvia since the early 1990’s and never had any problem with law enforcement.
After bad publicity in early 2018 about massive corruption and money laundering, Latvia as usual announced a clean-up, the main aspect of which was having Rietumu Bank close half of its shell-company deposit accounts. We were wondering how Rietumu could do that, because it probably cannot pay back the depositors. Normally, Latvian banks operate by taking in depositor money and transferring the money to insiders using fake loans. These fake loan ‘assets’ sit on the books for years until the bank eventually collapses and we learn that the assets weren’t real.
Rietumu did manage to close half of its accounts, however this was done in a way that would be illegal in a civilized country. The bank gouged many clients with huge surprise fees thus erasing the account balances instead of allowing the balances to be withdrawn! Is it safe to assume that the depositors who got robbed were probably the lawful depositors and the depositors who Rietumu retained and didn’t rob were the biggest crooks? Here is a website where people who got robbed by Rietumu can organize:
