Money laundering and extortion (Russia-Latvia-Deutsche Bank)

The scandal in Latvia (with the investigation and detention of the central bank governor and the freezing of the transactions by one of the largest banks by the ECB) is just the tip of the iceberg of two decades of corruption, crime and money laundering on an enormous scale. It seems like...business models of various tax havens of the type of Cyprus are no exception. It seems that even without the status of a tax haven, a country can develop a business model, in which criminal organizations instrumentalize the tops of politics, the monetary authorities and the financial sector to burn tens of billions of dollars. Interestingly, corruption and financial transactions of Russian criminal organizations have been used for so long on everyone's eyes. So that dirty money through Latvia could have been channeled onto accounts of Western banks for the longest time, especially to Deutsche Bank.

A typical money laundering scheme

Well, that's probably why nobody wanted to stop that business. And they would all continue this money laundering, if the owner of a Latvian private bank (Norvik) who did not want to pay bribes to the governor, wouldn't go almost mentally absurd because of all the pressure from both sides. He did not want go through suing these activities in home country as he knew he will lose. So he did it abroad and in foreign media. Naturally, it is obvious that only a day after that, he was publicly attacked by the Latvian Prime Minister, which is why he is "harming the image" of Latvia.

I think I don't have to specially comment on that one

With whistle blowers who die in prison after disclosing dirty Russian transactions through banks, with banks washing 20 billion dollars of Russian money, they get a funny and sad financial fine of $ 640,000 and a governor, who is in extremely bad underground business - with ties to Russia, who in strange places meets with the victims of extortion.

Part of the story:
Latvia’s top banking official explained the “rules of the game” for successful banking in the small European country. His sidekick sat the owner of Norvik bank down, scribbling the sum on a piece of paper: 100,000 euros ($125,000) a month. An international complaint filed by Latvian bank Norvik alleges that a “Senior Latvian Official” repeatedly sought “to extort monetary bribes” and retaliated against the bank when its owners refused to pay up. The 39-page claim, filed before a World Bank arbitration body, did not name the Latvian official. That person is Ilmars Rimsevics, Norvik bank officials told The Associated Press.
... you can read the whole story on washingtonpost