Baiba Rubess, a long-time board member at Citadele Bank, has declared to exiled and terrorized Parex/Citadele whistleblower John Christmas that Parex/Citadele is “no longer criminal.” This is interesting because Parex/Citadele never announced that they were criminal in the first place and nobody ever got prosecuted when over a billion euros disappeared and the bank was caught intermediating huge bribes (Daimler, Solaris, Alstom, Kempmayer, TeliaSonera, etc.). In fact, the government has been telling the voters since 2008 that the collapse of Parex and the national economy was caused by “Sweden.”
If Parex/Citadele wants to change from being a “criminal organization” to being a lawful organization, then it will have to take certain steps: (1) admitting that all Parex annual reports were materially fraudulent from at least 1998 to 2008, (2) admitting that the EBRD bailout in 2009 was fraudulent, (3) admitting that all Citadele annual reports from 2010 onwards have been materially fraudulent because the EBRD transaction was not explained truthfully.
Prosecutions for all Citadele directors would be an easy straight-forward slam-dunk since, following a five-year cover-up, the prime minister admitted in 2014 that the 2009 EBRD/Parex/Citadele deal was fraudulent. However the prosecutors are instead focusing on their efforts to put Parex/Citadele dissident Ilmars Poikans in prison to punish him for being honest.
The Latvian media speculates that Ms. Rubess might become the head of Rail Baltic, in keeping with government policy of appointing Oligarch loyalists to important positions.
We at LawlessLatvia are still wondering when anyone in Washington or Brussels will wake up to what is happening in Latvia.
