January 22 2016
Latvia’s 12th largest bank, Trasta Komercbanka, is heading towards a bail-in. The Baltic state’s financial regulator is charging the bank’s management with failure to address allegations of money-laundering.
Over the weekend, the regulator imposed a €100,000 limit of withdrawal per depositor, that is, equal to the amount guaranteed by the EU. The announcement came on Friday, just before the end of the working day. The regulator’s chairman, Kristaps Zakulis, suggests the bank and its largest shareholders had been given ample warning of the need to address money laundering allegations.
Trasta Komercbanka has also been linked with the infamous Russian “Laundromat” scandal, that is, a money-laundering mechanism for $20 billion stolen by corrupt politicians and organized crime groups in the CIS region. The Latvian bank, along with one Moldovan and 19 Russian financial institutions was according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)instrumental to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.