Reported by: Matīss Arnicāns (Latvian Television), “De facto” (Latvian Television)

There has been no visible progress in negotiations between the Latvian Ministry of Finance with colleagues from the U.S. Department of the Treasury regarding the withdrawal of some statements which were presented in the 2018 sanctions decision taken by the U.S. against ABLV bank, LTV’s De Facto reports.

The Ministry of Finance wants to start a “removal process” of the mentioned document, claiming that its existence prevents the attraction of investment.

Marshall Billingslea, the former Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing, who was in office when it was proposed to cut ABLV off from dollar transactions, calls Latvia’s actions “concerning”.

“I personally would be surprised to see the determination removed. And I am not sure that it is particularly wise for the current Finance Minister to be lobbying the way he is for its removal, given what we know about ABLV, what we know they were doing, what we know was a concerted money laundering effort run at the very top of the bank,” Billingslea said in an interview with LTV.

He believes that together with the non-appointment of the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit Ilze Znotiņa for a second term, “those are concerning signs, but that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the Latvian government has done an incredible job in cleaning up the financial system”.

It was not possible to find out what, if anything, the U.S. Department of the Treasury plans to do with Latvia’s ABLV bank sanctions proposal. The US Treasury declined to be interviewed.

In June, an article appeared on the business newswire “Bloomberg” about Finance Minister Jānis Reirs’s (JV) talks in Washington with the U.S. Department of the Treasury regarding the lifting of measures against ABLV. After that, the Ministry of Finance of Latvia released a statement saying that Reirs did not ask to lift the restrictions against the bank, but proposed that the U.S. provide an assessment of the reforms of the Latvian financial sector.

“My request was to start the procedure for the removal of this decision, not about ABLV bank, but for the cancellation of the decision where the problems in the country are pointed out,” Reirs told De Facto in an interview a month ago, and said that Latvia had fully corrected the problems highlighted in the original sanctions decision. 

Reirs said that starting negotiations with the US was not his invention alone, but that he had the authority of the government. In at least one case, the mentioned Treasury document has prevented an unnamed international financial institution from investing in Latvia.

Reirs met with U.S. officials again last week. In a written response to LTV, the Ministry of Finance of Latvia revealed that the U.S. has been provided with current information on the implemented improvements in the field of prevention of money laundering, but no decisions have been made at the moment.

Read full report: https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/banks/latvian-approach-to-us-over-ablv-bank-proves-ineffective.a479319/