Two countries, two murders that deserve answers
MEP David Casa testified before the public inquiry into journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination in late July saying Dubai had offered assistance in the investigation on 17 Black, casting doubt on what the former Head of the Economic Crimes Unit Ian Abdilla had told the court.
A month earlier, 300 Latvian police officers raided ABLV
Bank in Latvia to investigate a payment made by ABLV to 17 Black of $1.4
million with a possible link to Azerbaijan. That must mean Latvia is also
giving full assistance. Or is it?
I gave details of fraud at ABLV’s predecessor – Parex Bank –
to the Latvian authorities in 2005. They refused to investigate even though it
was the largest fraud in national history. I was chased out of Latvia with
death threats.
The Latvian State Police waited until 2010 then sent a
letter to my address in Malta stating that the threats will not be investigated
because the statute of limitations had expired.
I think the purpose of the letter was intimidation. It was
their way of letting me know the police knew where I was living.
Parex Bank collapsed in 2008. The Latvian government made a
huge loan to Parex Bank to fund the movement of deposits from Parex Bank to
ABLV Bank. Most deposits were held by shell companies and originated at
representative offices in Russia, Azerbaijan and other former Soviet States.
In 2009, Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis invited
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to conduct due
diligence on Parex Bank. The EBRD refused to communicate with me, conducted due
diligence and found that everything was fine. It even demonstrated confidence
by purchasing a stake.
In the following years, information emerged that half of the
assets were bad, including the ones flagged in my 2005 whistleblowing, and that
the EBRD investment was fake.
It was reversed in 2014 at a profit to the EBRD under the
terms of a guarantee that the Latvian government had designated a State secret
so any journalist that published information about the guarantee could be
prosecuted. The guarantee was so secret that Dombrovskis didn’t even inform the
Opposition parties in the country.
The Latvian government had spent approximately two billion
euro to cover up my whistleblowing and move activity from Parex Bank to ABLV
Bank, thus continuing a large scale money laundering racket for another decade.
During this time Latvia sunk into poverty and 20% to 30% of
the population left the country.
Horrified yet? It gets worse.
Maria Efimova’s whistleblowing against Pilatus Bank in 2017
hit the headline of every major newspaper in Malta. In Latvia, my
whistleblowing against Parex Bank in 2005 was mentioned only once in a major
newspaper and was never mentioned again even though the crash of Parex Bank
destroyed the national economy.
Why wouldn’t something like this be reported more widely in
the media? A possible answer came in 2017 when it was discovered that the
Latvian Ministry of Finance has a secret policy of paying Latvian journalists
to write favourable articles.
While this was going on, Latvia was spending taxpayer money
in Washington for the purpose of convincing the US Treasury not to blacklist
more Latvian banks.
The Justice for Martins Bunkus Foundation has just this week
revealed how ASG Resolution Capital, a company closely connected to ABLV Bank,
has paid some $2 million to one of the largest lobbying groups in the US, in a
bid to lessen the impact of a money laundering investigation by US authorities.
Arnis Lagzdins was the Head of Compliance at Parex Bank, so
I know him. He was one of the main people who fought to cover up my
whistleblowing. Next, he was the Head of Compliance at Ukio Bank of Lithuania.
In 2013, the assets of Ukio disappeared and again there were
mysterious transactions with the EBRD. Ukio made international headlines when
the Panama Papers revealed that Russian oligarchs were using Ukio to pay many
millions to Vladimir Putin’s cellist.
So what happened next? Was Lagzdins prosecuted? No, just the
opposite. The Latvian government hired Lagzdins to be the liaison for the
financial regulator in Washington and sent him there with a diplomatic
passport.
Another person I know who used to work for Parex was already
in Washington. Her name is Sally Painter and she is a lobbyist. Her firm is
called Blue Star Strategies, which has been in the news recently because it was
subpoenaed in the investigation of Ukrainian firm Burisma, found to be paying
$50,000 per month to the son of US presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Painter’s work in 2017 included intermediating a secret
payment from Latvia to Atlantic Council fellow Anders Aslund to publish an
article stating that ABLV was not involved in money laundering.
The US Treasury blacklisted ABLV in 2018 because of large
scale money laundering involving Ukraine, Moldova and North Korea. It was only
discovered later that the Aslund article had been commissioned.
Previously, Aslund had co-authored a book with Dombrovskis
which portrayed Dombrovskis as a hero who saved Latvia from a financial crisis
caused by Sweden. The book didn’t mention that what Dombrovskis actually did
was cover up the looting of a Russian Mafia bank with a fake privatisation
which crashed the economy. Sweden had nothing to do with it.
If we consider that ‘actions speak louder than words’, the
Latvian government hasn’t been cracking down on the money launderers from ABLV
but doing just the opposite – allocating enormous amounts of taxpayer money to
protect them.
So can we really believe Latvia isn’t protecting ABLV
anymore – the bank linked to money transfers to 17 Black which was discovered
in 2017?
ABLV was blacklisted in 2018. The proposed independent
administrator was killed in the same year. ABLV was then given permission to
‘self-liquidate,’ and the police waited until 2020 to raid ABLV.
The European Commission made the unbelievable decision this
year to appoint Dombrovskis in charge of anti-money laundering at the European
level.
I’ve made requests to authorities in Malta, including an
appeal to Malta’s Governor at the EBRD – Finance Minister Edward Scicluna – two
years ago, but no action has been taken.
A Latvian lawyer and a Maltese journalist have been killed
for exposing money laundering and corruption on cases that are closely linked.
It is not in the interest of the public in both of these countries that these
scandals are swept under the carpet through lobbying efforts or political interference
in investigations.
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