https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ex-ecb-official-rimsevics-found-guilty-of-bribery-in-2018-money-laundering-scandal-1.2014024

Former European Central Bank Governing Council member Ilmars Rimsevics was found guilty by a Latvian court of bribe-taking and faces six years in prison alongside confiscation of his assets.

Wednesday’s ruling stated that Rimsevics, 58, broke the law by accepting payments and a trip to Russia from shareholders of a now-defunct bank a decade ago. The sentence matched what prosecutors had sought. Rimsevics said he’d “definitely” appeal the verdict, before quickly exiting the hearing.

The ex-central banker was also given probation and a five-year ban on holding public office. A co-conspirator was handed a five-year prison term and will also be subject to asset confiscation.

Rimsevics’s 2018 arrest was part of a wave of money-laundering scandals that engulfed Latvia and neighboring Estonia. The Baltic euro and NATO member saw its banking sector’s model of moving US dollars for Russian businesses implode as the US Treasury demanded regulatory changes and international lenders closed correspondent accounts.

Rimsevics’s downfall after more than a quarter-century as either governor or deputy governor was rapid and followed the publication of photos showing him in Russia’s far east. There were also allegations of deals done at a remote sauna, and solicitations of bribes.

Read More: Russia Money-Laundering Probe Engulfs Defiant Central Banker

The case caught the attention of Latvia’s public, with a film and two books having already been published. A recent book by a friend of Rimsevics that declares his innocence was a bestseller in several Riga stores.

Prosecutors relied on clandestine wiretaps of a sauna in 2013 and testimony from two shareholders of Trasta Komercbanka, which was shut in 2016, partly due to money laundering. One later recanted his testimony while the other died.

The criminal trail was delayed by challenges to the European Court of Justice over Rimsevics’s potential immunity from prosecution as a member of the ECB’s Governing Council. The ECJ ultimately ruled there was no immunity protection for money laundering.

Rimsevics, who blamed three commercial banks conspiring against him for his legal problems, also faces a criminal trial for attempted witness tampering and for buying a fake Covid-19 certificate. He denies wrongdoing in both of those cases, too.