Banks, Financial Services, Latvia

ABLV Bank’s liquidators have hired EY as an independent adviser tasked with developing an anti-money laundering compliance methodology for the payout of money to the bank’s creditors. The EY team will also help with the implementation and supervision of the methodology to prevent possible cases of money laundering or sanctions violations in the payout process.

The EY team will include experts from the EU and Europe with practical experience in preventing financial crimes in global financial institutions, specifically in areas like Know Your Customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), international sanctions (IS) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT).

EY has been involved in developing the methodology for compliance processes at ABLV Bank since May 2018 and has been working closely with the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) and ABLV Bank’s liquidators on the project.

As reported, the Latvian financial regulator, the Finance and Capital Market Commission, acting on the instructions from the European Central Bank (ECB), ordered ABLV Bank to stop all payments as of February 19, 2018, following a report by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of Treasury about ABLV Bank's involvement in international money laundering schemes and corruption.

On February 26 the shareholders of ABLV Bank made a decision to start the voluntary liquidation process for maximum protection of the interests of its clients and creditors.

On May 3 ABLV Bank and its largest shareholders filed a complaint with the EU Court of Justice against the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Single Resolution Board (SRB) about several possible violations, including abuse of power, failure to observe proportionality and equal treatment, etc. The complaint lists a range of serious objections to the manner of how the decision about the bank being failing or likely to fail was taken.