The European Central Bank governing council met in the Latvian capital Riga on June 14 with the host, the beleaguered governor of Latvijas Banka Ilmars Rimsevics, not attending.
Rimsevics faces charges of corruption in his home country, which is also in the financial world spotlight for lax controls of its boutique banks, deemed to serve as channels for dirty money from Russia and elsewhere in the post-Soviet world.
The recent collapse of Latvia’s third-biggest lender ABLV has prompted questions about ECB’s supervision of banks in the Eurozone.
The ECB responds to the allegations of overlooking trouble brewing at ABLV that it does not have adequate control powers. As ABLV is going into self-liquidation, the ECB’s Vice-President Luis de Guindos said in Riga that there was a need for “consistency and coherence among different countries with respect to insolvency regulation.”
The ECB also refrained from commenting on the Rimsevics case. The Eurozone’s central bank asked the European Union's top court in April to rule on whether measures imposed by Latvia Rimsevics – effectively barring him from work at Latvijas Banka – are in line with EU law.
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