On June 27, 2017, the Latvian Financial and Capital Market Commission entered into administrative agreements with three different Latvian Banks for failings related to breaches of North Korean sanctions. Each of the banks cooperated with the investigations.
JSC Baltikums Bank and JSC PrivatBank were each fined €35,575 for “weaknesses in customer due diligence and transaction monitoring that led to the situation that bank had been used to circumvent international sanctions requirements imposed against North Korea”.
JSC Reģionālā investiciju Banka, was fined €570,364, for the same failings, but also for “failure to ensure effective functioning of internal control system”. To remedy this, the bank was undertaken to invest €2.8 million on “the improvement of its internal control system in 2017/2018”.
In addition official warnings were issued to those at the bank responsible for AML and CTF controls. The bank also undertook to “assess its AML/CTF internal control system and take the necessary measures to improve its functioning and effectiveness in line with the action plan, to perform external testing on the categorization of customer base and IT solutions, as well as assess the risks associated with cross-border enforcement of sanctions”.