Banker: ‘Nightmare’ dodging extortion attempts in Latvia

LONDON — Latvia’s top banking official, a key member of the European Central Bank, has been accused by local bank Norvik of seeking kickbacks, trying to launder Russian money and retaliating against the bank when it refused to play by the “rules of the game.”

In a high-stakes drama for the tiny Baltic country, Ilmars Rimsevics was detained Saturday by Latvian anti-corruption authorities and questioned for hours into the night. State TV showed him walking free on Monday, without charges, though he is still being investigated for suspected bribery.

Norvik bank has filed an international legal complaint against Latvia in which it alleges that a “Senior Latvian Official” repeatedly sought “to extort monetary bribes,” and threatened the bank when its owner and chairman, Grigory Guselnikov, refused to pay up.

“The high-level official mentioned in our request for arbitration is Rimsevics,” Norvik’s CEO, Oliver Bramwell, told The Associated Press. Guselnikov confirmed that it was Rimsevics.

Rimsevics’ lawyer told Latvian TV that he promises to provide more information about the case on Tuesday. The ECB declined to comment on Rimsevics’ status.

The threat of criminal charges against the man who has been at the top of the country’s banking sector since 1992, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, has plunged the small Baltic nation into turmoil.

Rimsevics’ detention is particularly sensitive as he sits on the top policy-making council of the ECB, Europe’s most powerful financial institution, and is privy to the state secrets of Latvia, NATO and the European Union.

Any connections to money laundering would raise concerns of the risk of blackmail from Russia’s secret services or organized crime, and come at a time when Latvian security services warn that Russia is actively trying to obtain state secrets from Latvian officials to weaken the European Union and United States.

Guselnikov said he first met Rimsevics in 2015 after he was introduced to a man called Renars Kokins, who was said to know the country’s legal and political landscape well. Kokins invited Guselnikov to a meeting in a large villa in the suburbs of the capital. Soon after Guselnikov got there, another man arrived, on foot, and entered without knocking: it was Rimsevics.

He was brief and to the point. He told Guselnikov he could help him because the nation’s financial regulator was loyal to him personally. All he had to do was “cooperate” with Kokins, Guselnikov recalled.

Rimsevics left 10 minutes later and Kokins sat Guselnikov down at a table. He pulled a pen out and wrote on a piece of paper: “100,000 per month.”

Kokins did not use the word “payment.” He explained to the banker that all Latvian banks “cooperate” in this manner, Guselnikov says.

In the following weeks, Guselnikov tried to stall but found that every time he refused to pay, his bank would get hit with new regulatory measures.