$2M lobbying for Latvian bank used by suspect in journalist’s murder
ASG Resolution Capital, a company closely connected to
Latvia’s ABLV Bank, has paid some $2 million to one of the largest lobbying
groups in the United States, in a bid to lessen the impact of a money
laundering investigation by US authorities.
Research carried out by the Justice for Martins Bunkus
foundation shows that the company paid one of the most influential lobbyists in
the US, Mercury Public Affairs.
ABLV Bank has been linked to money transfers to 17 Black,
the Dubai company owned by Yorgen Fenech, who is the suspected mastermind in
the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The bank is also mentioned in a report filed with Latvia’s
Office for the Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal
Activity by the family of Caruana Galizia, which links her death to a criminal
network. Together with Pilatus Bank, ABLV was accused of money laundering by
authorities in the US.
The family of Caruana Galizia had delivered a report to
Latvian authorities, following investigations by the Daphne Project. Those
investigations revealed that Latvia’s ABLV Bank, like Pilatus Bank in Malta,
was a service provider to a money laundering network, implicating
politically-exposed persons, PEPs, in Malta and Azerbaijan.
The company hiring the lobbyists, ASG Resolution Capital,
has close links with ABLV Bank. As the foundation learned, the executive body
of ASG Resolution is made up of former board members and employees of ABLV
Bank.
Mercury Public Affairs has been engaged to represent the
interests of ASG Resolution Capital at the US Treasury Department and at
FinCen, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. FinCen had published a report
on the potential involvement of ABLV Bank in large-scale money laundering
schemes.
Additionally, investigations by the Bunkus Foundation show
reason to suspect that ASG Resolution Capital is taking advantage of gaps in
the laws of Latvia to support ABLV Bank’s creditors’ claims for those clients
who might not be able to prove the legality of the origins of their funds.
“ASG Resolution Capital, with the help of the US lobby,
probably is striving to gain influence over processes and institutions in order
to make it possible for it to implement the successful and unimpeded transfer
of monetary funds of potentially suspicious origins from ABLV Bank to current
accounts of third parties,” according to the Justice for Martin Bunkus
Foundation.
The Justice for Martin Bunkus Foundation was set up after
the 2018 murder of Martin Bunkus, a Latvian lawyer who sought to have ABLV Bank
involuntarily liquidated. His murder remains unsolved.
Caruana Galizia’s family has linked Bunkus’ murder with that
of the Maltese journalist. Bunkus was murdered only seven months after Caruana
Galizia.
Comments
Post a Comment