{"id":31254,"date":"2018-02-19T18:10:07","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T23:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31254"},"modified":"2018-02-19T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T23:10:07","slug":"latvia-bank-crisis-central-bank-in-chaos-as-ecb-blocks-payments-by-third-largest-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31254","title":{"rendered":"Latvia Bank Crisis: Central Bank In Chaos As ECB Blocks Payments By Third Largest Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Latvia Bank Crisis: Central Bank In Chaos As ECB Blocks Payments By Third Largest Bank<\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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One day after we reported <\/a>that the central bank governor and ECB Governing Council member Ilmars Rimsevics was detained by Latvia\u2019s anti-corruption authority on Saturday on suspicion of accepting a bribe of more than \u20ac100,000, prompting both Latvia’s Prime Minister and the president to call on Rimsevics to resign, Latvia appears to have a full-blown banking crisis on its hands, after the European Central Bank froze all payments by Latvia’s third largest bank, ABLV, following U.S. accusations the bank laundered billions in illicit funds, <\/strong>including for companies connected to North Korea\u2019s banned ballistic-missile program.<\/p>\n

Latvia’s Central Bank governor Ilmars Rimsevics<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The troubles started on February 14, when Latvia began investigating\u00a0 <\/a>ABLV over suspicions of illegal trading related to North Korea’s weapons system. The investigation was launched after the Treasury Department charged the bank with having \u201cinstitutionalized money laundering as a pillar of the bank\u2019s business practices,\u201d which proposed preventing the bank from opening an account in the U.S.<\/p>\n

That decision immediately made ABLV a pariah to other financial institutions, effectively cutting its access to the dollar and funding flows from the world\u2019s most important market, and forcing it to rely exclusively on the ECB as it sole-source of funds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the WSJ reported<\/a>, in proposing the ban on ABLV, Treasury said the bank managed transactions for clients connected to several long-sanctioned North Korean firms.<\/p>\n

These include North Korea\u2019s Foreign Trade Bank, the institution that manages Pyongyang\u2019s foreign-currency earnings, revenue that U.S. and United Nations officials say go directly to North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Treasury, ABLV\u2019s alleged illegal activity also included funneling billions of dollars in public corruption proceeds from Azerbaijan, Russia and Ukraine through shell company accounts.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Latvia Bank Crisis: Central Bank In Chaos As ECB Blocks Payments By Third Largest Bank One day after we reported that the central bank governor and ECB Governing Council member Ilmars Rimsevics was detained by Latvia\u2019s anti-corruption authority on Saturday on suspicion of accepting a bribe of more than \u20ac100,000, prompting both Latvia’s Prime Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18715,15380,63,122,233,282,18716,3807,4318],"class_list":["post-31254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-ablv","tag-bank-crisis","tag-banks","tag-central-bank","tag-ecb","tag-european-central-bank","tag-ilmars-rimsevics","tag-latvia","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31255,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31254\/revisions\/31255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}