OREANDA-NEWS. A working group with the participation of representatives of 25 states was created to analyze information on the participation of the liquidated Latvian ABLV bank in possible money laundering schemes. This was announced on Wednesday by the head of the Financial Intelligence Service of Latvia, Ilze Znotinja.

“We have received all the historical data and are working so that, until real payments of money have begun, we’ll evaluate customer relationships, transaction history, and also now withhold money, if we see that their origin is illegal”, she said. According to Znotini, to identify the involvement of ABLV in schemes that allegedly contributed to the development of the DPRK nuclear program, a working group was created, which included representatives of 25 countries.

“The only thing I can say right now is that the financial intelligence service has always considered these suspicions to be very serious,” she said. “As a result of the audit, we stated that we needed a more serious mechanism to analyze these processes. Therefore, we convened representatives of 25 countries to create "an international working group. ABLV received or sent funds to so many jurisdictions. In order for us to understand how much we can talk about possible illegal actions, we also need international tools". Znotinya believes that due to the complexity of this task, it may take several years to solve it.

In mid-February 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department for Financial Crimes accused ABLV, one of the largest banks in Latvia, in money laundering and bribery. According to the US agency, the bank made "deals with separately designated UN organizations involved in the purchase or export of DPRK ballistic missiles". ABLV has also been charged with servicing accounts of corrupt individuals. After that, the bank began the process of self-liquidation, and the Council for the Development of the Latvian Financial Sector approved a ban on banks to cooperate with dummy companies.