The volume of assets for which the Financial Intelligence Service (FID) makes the decision to freeze has been decreasing in recent years and may amount to just over one million euros this year, said FID head Tom Platicis in an interview with the LETA agency.
If the number of participants in the financial sector or their business models do not change in Latvia, the volumes of frozen assets will definitely not be the same as before, noted Platicis, adding that the largest amount of assets was frozen in 2022.
“An extremely important factor that is assessed when suspicions arise in cases of freezing assets is the element of urgency. Previously, such urgency was caused by working with liquidated credit institutions, which were the contact point for money laundering schemes in Latvia. If the assets were not frozen, it is highly likely that they would have been immediately transferred to third countries, where neither potential victims nor state institutions would have been able to reach them. Now, the work with liquidated credit institutions by the FID is practically completed, and, accordingly, attention is focused on local crime, where the element of urgency rarely manifests,” said Platicis.
He reported that currently, assets are mainly frozen in cases of fraud, where large sums are extorted from Latvian entrepreneurs or residents. In such cases, there has been a trend over the past two years that fraudsters target accountants of medium and large enterprises who have access to significant amounts of money.
There are several instances where, after appeals from victims or law enforcement for assistance, it has been possible to intercept quite large sums. There is also a developing practice where assets can be frozen in another EU member state.
“Very often, the scheme is as follows: after extorting money from some account in Latvia, it is immediately transferred to a bank or payment institution in another EU country, and at the next step or shortly thereafter, these funds are converted into cryptocurrency. After that, tracking such assets to intercept them in time is practically impossible,” acknowledged Platicis, while also adding that there are tools for tracking transactions with virtual currencies and other similar assets.
Leave a comment