Latvia’s Financial and Capital Market Commission on Tuesday (18 June) said it has imposed a fine of 100,000 lats (€142,543) – the maximum fine under Latvian law – on a bank involved in laundering over €170 million stolen from the Russian government.
The name of the bank was not made public.
The money laundering scheme was revealed by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who worked for Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund specialising in Russian assets.
He died in a Russian jail in 2009 after being beaten and denied medical care.
Hermitage filed a complaint in July 2012 to Latvian authorities naming six Latvian banks that allegedly laundered funds from the illegal tax refund exposed by Magnitsky.
The Magnitsky case has caused international uproar, with the US in April imposing a travel ban on 18 Russian officials linked to the affair.
Latvia is due to adopt the euro in January 2014 and is under increased pressure from the EU to clean up its act on money laundering, especially as Russian capital may have moved from bailed-out Cyprus to the former Soviet republic.
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