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As already announced, in a closed session on Wednesday, two committees of the Seimas, Budget and Finance (BFK) and National Security and Defense, discussed the investigations carried out by US institutions on commercial banks operating in Lithuania, after what which BFK President Mykolas Majauskas warned of a shadow over the Baltic banking. .
M. Jurgilas assures that the US authorities do not carry out investigations in Lithuania, but they hinder the violations in our neighbors.
“It is very important to understand that it is a communication crisis; it is impossible to separate the named entities, because their names are the same even in four countries, everything is named in one region. But both the actions and the legal entities that operate in different countries are different. Here too the participation of politicians is very important, not only in the situation of interest, but also in the management at the political level with relevant partners in different countries “, emphasizes M. Jurgilas.
He explains that the debate has intensified following reports in the US media late last year that US authorities are investigating the activities of Swedish banks in the Baltic countries.
“And there is a desire to know what is being done here. According to the current information available, no one is investigating Lithuanian entities, it is very important to emphasize that. It is very good that this problem has finally come to the attention of politicians, because it is not today, it is not the end of last year, it has been happening, I would say, for the last three years: so much because of the closure of Danske Bank in Estonia as well as other banks that operate in the region.
On December 15 last year, Bloomberg, one of the world’s largest financial and business news agencies, announced that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating SEB, Swedbank and Danske Bank for possible money laundering and fraud.
The Swedish business daily Dagens Industri later reported that the country’s banks were under investigation by three US authorities: the Justice Department, the FBI and the federal prosecutor’s office, but did not name the sources. Banks in Sweden commented that the published information was not new and related to suspicious currency transactions reported in the past.
“Because there are the same banks with the same names in the region, it is very difficult to distinguish much and what the problems are,” says Jurgil.
It ensures that according to the institution currently available, no Lithuanian entity is currently included in the scope of the investigation carried out in the US However, it criticized the governance of the banks.
Marius jurgilas
“The previous governance structure, which the parent bank decided and made decisions about certain actions, is now considered inappropriate and that government is changing. But this can only be said now, retrospectively. Unfortunately, that was the case. Most of the Banks operating in the region had regional structures of this type, which are not legal entities, but are a “unit of the Baltic States.” And they even had their own governance structures, ”said M. Jurgilas.
It also confirmed that, according to the information available, possible previously identified irregularities in the banks are being investigated.
“There is nothing new here, these are the same violations that have been identified by the supervisory authorities in Latvia, Estonia, Sweden and Denmark. And based on that, because some of those banks have branches in the United States through which possible payments have passed, the US authorities are initiating their own investigation, reported Bloomberg, and this has caused a renewed stir, “concludes Jurgil.
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