Where Latvia's Financial Corruption Scandal May Lead

Its central bank chief has been charged with bribery. A lawyer liquidating the bank that was accused of bribing him was killed in a hail of machine-gun fire. One of the country’s biggest lenders was shut down after the U.S. levied allegations of money laundering and violations of sanctions on North Korea. What’s going on in Latvia? The Baltic nation of 2 million people, once an unwilling part of the Soviet Union, is no stranger to financial scandal. After episodes of drama befitting a new Netflix series, the country is locked in a standoff with the European Central Bank that could go on for quite a while.

Ilmars Rimsevics, who’s been in charge of Latvia’s central bank as governor or deputy since 1992, is accused of soliciting a bribe from Trasta Kommercbanka AS, a small lender that was shut in 2016 after being implicated in a $20 billion money-laundering scheme. Specifically, he’s accused of receiving 250,000 euros ($294,000) five years ago and a paid fishing trip to Russia’s Far East in 2010 in exchange for helping Trasta with its regulator problems. Prosecutors allege he received the bribe in payments between 2012 and 2013. Martins Bunkus, a Latvian lawyer who’d been working on Trasta’s insolvency, was machine-gunned to death while driving in Riga, Latvia’s capital, on May 30. A police official said it looked to be “a carefully planned murder” that was “connected with the victim’s professional work,” though police haven’t linked his death with any specific client he worked with.