Latvia

A district court in the Latvian capital on Tuesday declared the country's oldest and largest cosmetics company Dzintars insolvent, local media reported. An aide to the judge at Riga City Pardaugava District Court who ruled on the financially ailing company's insolvency said that Dzintars had failed to provide proof that it had met its obligations to creditors, Xinhuanet reported.

Shareholders in former Latvian bank Trasta suffered a setback on Tuesday when the European Court of Justice ruled that their action against the European Central Bank was inadmissible before the court, Reuters reported. The ECB withdrew Trasta Komercbanka’s banking license in 2016 after it broke rules to fight money laundering and terror financing. The General Court of the European Union had previously ruled in 2017 that the case of the group of shareholders was admissible. However, the European Court of Justice, the EU’s upper court, said that the lower court had erred in its judgment.

A bill is in the making in Latvia over insolvency for small debtors who can't repay what they owe, LSM reported. There are about 40,000 such debtors in Latvia, according to the Finance Latvia Association, which says that debts shouldn't be pardoned fully under the proposed law, instead requiring even the small debtors to cover 10 to 15% of the sum. The bill in question is currently being reviewed at the Justice Ministry.

A Latvian court declared the country’s sixth-biggest lender insolvent, sealing the demise of the last bank to level accusations in a high-level corruption scandal, Bloomberg News reported. The decision, which Latvia’s Financial and Capital Market Commission said was taken on Thursday, comes almost a month after AS PNB Banka became one of only a handful of lenders declared by the European Central Bank to be “failing or likely to fail” because of insufficient capital. It joins Banco Popular Espanol SA, Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA, Veneto Banca SpA and ABLV Bank AS.

Latvian banking regulator has filed an insolvency suit against the troubled local lender PNB Banka. The move comes just a week after the bank’s operations were suspended after the European Central bank (ECB) determined that PNB Banka is likely to fail, RBI reported. The Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) of Latvia has submitted an application to the City of Riga Vidzeme District. It also requested the appointment of Vigo Krastiņš as the insolvency administrator.

However bad a spiralling money laundering scandal has been to the three Baltic countries, it could get even worse. Financial regulators in Estonia and Latvia told the Financial Times they were afraid Swedish banks — which dominate both headlines on money laundering and their banking systems — could withdraw from the region, just as Danske Bank and Nordea have already done amid dirty money allegations, the Financial Times reported. “Sure, we are very worried,” said Peters Putnins, head of the Latvian regulator.

Rigas Satiksma municipal public transport company may face insolvency in March without new EUR 37 million subsidies, said Rigas Satiksme acting CEO Anrijs Matiss in an interview with Ir magazine, referred LETA. The city’s budget has not yet been adopted, therefore municipal companies receive one 12th of last year’s basic budget monthly, and in the case of Rigas Satiksme it is EUR 8.35 mln, which is about EUR 100 mln a year, The Baltic Course reported.