Graham Stack
Latvian prosecutors have accused the shareholder and top manager of ABLV, the country’s third largest bank, of laundering 2.1 billion euros using a network of fictitious companies.
The director of the notorious shell company will also be investigated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
ABLV co-owner and CEO Ernst Bernis, former executive vice-president Vadims Reinfelds, as well as Arvis Stenbergs, co-director of the International Overseas Services (IOS) group that provides Shell, and five others are accused of money laundering. about the crime using shell companies founded and managed by IOS.money, according to the Latvian Television program “What’s happening in Latvia?” resulting prosecution transcript.
The accusation comes on the heels of OCCRP reports on money laundering through IOS and Latvian banks, such as ABLV, starting in 2012 in connection with “The Proxy Platform” and “Troika Laundromat” projects.
OCCRP has also investigated ABLV in relation to the Pandora Papers.
Other money laundering incidents related to ABLV investigated by OCCRP include Grand Theft Moldova and Ukrainian fraudster Serhiy Kurchenko.
The latter is also mentioned in the indictment, the message “What is happening in Latvia?”.
Bernice, Renfield and Steenberg pleaded not guilty to the charges.
According to the information provided by the specialized prosecutor’s office for organized crime and other branches of Latvia, starting in 2010, Berenice led an organized crime group that laundered money using shell companies founded and managed by IOS.
Bank-backed shell companies in Cyprus, Seychelles, Panama, Belize, the British Virgin Islands and the United Kingdom allowed customers to transfer funds using fraudulent contracts, thereby concealing the ownership and origin of their illicit funds.
ABLV Bank, through IOS, supervised the management of shell companies and the submission of their official documents.
IOS introduced designated administrators to hide the real beneficiaries from the shell companies.
The bank’s corporate services division played a key role in the money laundering, according to the indictment, overseeing the accounting and tracking of laundered money, as well as overseeing the pipeline of shell companies, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors also accused the former heads of the ABLV’s anti-money laundering campaign of money laundering.
Their job was to ensure that dirty money didn’t raise red flags.
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
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