On September 26, 2024, the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network "FinCEN" made the surprising decision to lift sanctions against ABLV Bank of Latvia. ABLV was sanctioned in 2018 for a number of reasons, including helping Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's middleman Sergei Kurchenko steal billions of dollars from Ukraine. This action triggered the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, followed by Russian invasions in 2014 and 2022.
The photo shows Post X of the US Embassy in Latvia announcing this decision. In this post, the US Embassy "applauds" Latvia for its "excellence" in the fight against money laundering.
As an exiled whistleblower exposing Kremlin money launderers and bank embezzlers in Latvia, sometimes called the Latvian Proxy Network, I am horrified by the US Treasury's decision and wonder whether it was motivated by corruption, incompetence, ignorance, or all three. ?
Latvian money laundering operations
The reality is that Latvia is funding money launderers rather than fighting them. Clear evidence that Latvia is secretly paying the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (partly owned by the US) to act as a shell owner of Russian offshore banks can be obtained from me (2009), Latvian government consultant Nomura (2010), the Parliament of the Netherlands (2014), Eurostat (2014 and 2018) and the Parliament of Latvia (2014 and 2015). Despite mountains of hard facts, almost everyone in the US government, the Latvian government and the mainstream media is either duped or playing the game of "plausible deniability" while corruption, fraud and money laundering continue to get worse. I wrote about this for FinTelegram with full evidence.
In 2004 I worked at Parex Bank of Latvia. The US Embassy asked me for information about Parex because they believed he was connected to Russian organized crime. I became aware of large fraudulent loans that Parex was making to insiders. The amount of these loans exceeded the bank's stated capital, indicating that the bank actually had negative capital. I have provided names and details to many agencies, including the US Embassy. Parex was later identified by a Spanish court in the Tambov Mafia case for providing money laundering accounts to both of the two named money launderers for the Putin-linked gang. And after that, two of the insiders were included in the US Treasury Department's Putin warning list.
The result of my disclosure was that the US Embassy, and later the US Treasury Department, refused to consider or even acknowledge receipt of the information. They refused to communicate with me, although they asked for information. Meanwhile, Latvian officials responded by holding Parex rallies at diplomatic premises in London and Switzerland so Pare x could borrow even more money, some of which was transferred to Eduard Khudainatov, whom the US FBI later identified as a front man holding assets in his own name on behalf of Putin .
Since the insider loans were not repaid as expected, the Latvian government began secretly paying the EBRD to pretend to invest in Parex in order to deceive observers that Parex had not been looted when it was. This deal was signed by Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis. Plus, Latvia provided Parex with huge loans to finance the move of Parex's accounts to subsidiary bank ABLV and Parex's new successor Citadele. Latvian politicians blamed the ensuing national financial collapse on the United States.
Key people from Parex moved their activities to Ukio Bank Lithuania and Danske Bank Estonia, where they organized large-scale money laundering scams linked to Putin. When Ukio was looted, the EBRD intervened in opaque ways. And EBRD subsidiary Citadele hired a former Parex banker while he controlled the Marshall Islands company at the Danske money laundering center.
The total amount of money laundering at all of these institutions combined amounted to more than one trillion dollars and euros, making it the largest money laundering racket in world history. Kremlin-linked bankers walked away with the money, while Latvian taxpayers were duped to save Parex, Lithuanian taxpayers were duped to save Ukio, and Danish pensioners who invested in Danske received a huge fine for money laundering they didn't know about. . A 2018 Eurostat report indicates that Latvia is secretly paying the EBRD to pretend to invest in Citadele, which is the same thing that Latvia and the EBRD did with Parex. This Citadele scam continues now, in 2024.
How is it possible that the US Treasury missed everything? I have written many articles for independent media sites. Independent journalists from several countries have written articles for other media sites. I've been interviewed on a lot of podcasts. I arranged for letters and emails to be sent to several thousand people in relevant organizations. Two documentaries detailing the Parex and Citadele fraud were broadcast repeatedly on Latvian television ("Jumts" and "Jumts 2"), including interviews with me, evidence of the fraud, and statements by officials about the fraud. A third documentary from another team has been completed and is now beginning to circulate. And three scam-inspired thrillers have already been written and published, all by different authors. Yet somehow the US Treasury doesn't know what's going on.
Where does the US Treasury get its information if not from whistleblowers, media articles, and television? The sad answer is that they deal with politically connected lobbyists who receive hefty consulting fees from foreign governments.
Connection with Blue Star Strategies
One such lobbyist working for Latvia and ABLV was Sally Painter of Blue Star Strategies. She became a prominent lobbyist working for Ukrainian citizens Dmitry Firtash and Ivan Fursin, who controlled RosUkrEnergo in Ukraine and Trasta Komercbanka in Latvia. It was about helping Putin, through Yanukovych, control the Ukrainian government. She then worked for Parex. I know her, and I know, at least as far as Parex is concerned, her function was to convince the US Treasury not to impose sanctions.
She was the intermediary who encouraged Hunter Biden to join the board of directors of Burisma of Ukraine. Blue Star Strategies was summoned to court on suspicion that Burisma oligarch Nikolai Zlochevsky was buying influence, but so far no one has been punished. And Painter was the intermediary who encouraged former CIA agent Joseph Cofer Black to join the board of directors of Baltic International Bank of Latvia. She also secretly commissioned an article written by Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council praising ABLV.
Another person who served as a consultant helping ABLV in Washington was Daniel Glaser, former US Treasury Assistant Secretary for Counter-Terrorism Financing. Could it be that Glaser somehow convinced the US Treasury that ABLV in particular and Latvia in general were conducting a raid and sweep against money launderers, although there were no raids or sweeps?
And this brings us to the big hole in the United States' defense: the modern practice of "tick-the-box" measures is replacing traditional law enforcement measures such as jailing criminals and recovering stolen money.
The Egmont Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) was founded in 1995. In 2003, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), created by the G7, issued clear guidelines for countries to establish FIUs. As a result, by 2004 the Egmont Group had 94 members. One of the members is the Latvian Pension Fund.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned ABLV in early 2018, and Ilze Znotina took over Latvia's FIU in late 2018 as part of Latvia's efforts to give foreign governments the impression that Latvia is fighting money laundering. Znotina made a public comment when she joined FIU that she had previously reported irregularities at Parex Bank to Latvian authorities, but that the authorities had ignored her. At first I was overjoyed, but soon the situation became even darker.
Latvian banks file tens of thousands of suspicious activity reports (SARs) with the FIU every year. FIU says it is considering most of them, but not all due to budget and staffing constraints. In any case, it doesn't seem to matter whether they look at all or none of the SARs as corruption, fraud and money laundering continue unchecked and unchecked.
For example, the FIU does not seem to know that the EBRD's investments in Parex and Citadele were not real. They appear to be unaware of the links between money laundering at these two banks and three other key banks: ABLV, Ukio and Danske. They don't seem to know about the Latvian "OIK" system, through which intermediaries are inserted between electricity consumers' payments and the electricity company Latvenergo. Some of these intermediaries are part of the same Latvian Proxy Network of companies, originally created by an agent called International Overseas Services, which provided thousands of shell companies used by Parex and ABLV.
The FIU appears to be unaware of the much-discussed "Construction Cartel" in Latvia, which inflates prices for infrastructure projects for the government. And to give the biggest, if not the biggest example, FIU doesn't seem to know that Solaris Bus of Poland is bribing Dombrovskis' political party. This was one part of my initial exposure, which I managed to sneak into a Latvian newspaper in 2007.
The Solaris bribery was discovered a second time by the US FBI and explained in a US Department of Justice settlement in 2010. And bribery was discovered for the third time by Polish authorities in 2018. Meanwhile, the bribery was moved from Parex to Citadele, and then to the European Investment Bank, as the amounts continued to rise. This gives me the impression of FIU as a room full of people in ties, looking through stacks of SARs and ticking boxes, while somehow being blind to newspaper headlines.
Last but not least, Znotina and the FIU were not interested in the nine million euros transferred by a Cypriot company controlled by a Russian who was connected to Putin through ABLV and Danske Estonia, Ande Karine. Full details about this were leaked in 2019. Karina is the wife of Krisjanis Karins, who was the Minister of Economy at the time of my exposure and who by 2019 became Prime Minister. He is a member of the same political party as Dombrovskis. I know Karins and Karina personally, and one of the reasons I decided to become a Parex whistleblower several years earlier was because I believed that Karins would use this information to stop the fraud. Znotina and Karina are publicly known to be long-time personal friends.
In 2022, Znotina left FIU. She currently works for an organization called AML Intelligence. In both her previous job and her current one, she regularly spoke at international anti-money laundering conferences, talking about the supposedly excellent work of FIU Latvia. This makes her similar to Dombrovskis, who, after signing the sham sale of the Parex stake to the EBRD, went on an international tour to tell people at conferences how he saved Latvia.
The US Treasury should appoint several new people to look at the situation in Latvia. When Latvia responded to the disappearance of Parex's assets by secretly paying EBRD to pretend to invest, it was a red flag. When Latvia continued to secretly pay EBRD to protect Citdele, it was another red flag. When the US Treasury sanctioned ABLV, a supposed independent administrator was gunned down with a Kalashnikov in broad daylight in Riga, and the Latvian government responded by allowing ABLV to “self-destruct,” it was not a purge. Moreover, the “self-destruction” never occurred. ABLV was only partially liquidated, transferring some assets to Citadele. Besides, paying Washington lobbyists while simultaneously funding an FIU that is unaware of major criminal schemes is not a cleanup.
The US Treasury has the authority to require Latvia and the EBRD to correct their accounting records prior to 2009, when the EBRD-Parex deal was signed. This could be the start of a real cleanup, and the entire world, including the US, Europe and especially Ukraine, will become safer.
