The Latvian financial regulator, the Financial and Capital Markets Commission, has imposed a money-laundering fine of $2.2 million on the country's oldest bank.

The regulator is demanding the sacking of all board members at the bank, which was originally set up in Latvia in 1992. It has also levied penalties on suspended chairman Oleksandr Trubakov (€96,449), Iveta lichens (€25,869), Oleksandr Mekeke?ko (€7,607) and a fourth individual. (Editor's note: the name of the fourth individual has been removed as of 15 February, 2022, following a request by this person's lawyer to do so under European Union data protection legislation. The Latvian regulator has also removed information about the case from its website.)

All the monies, as with the UK's regulatory fines, go to the Government and they must be paid within three months. It is not known whether anybody has appealed to the Regional Administrative Court, as is their right.

The disciplinary action is based on findings from an investigation of transactions conducted between 2012 and 2014 that were mentioned in a report, authored by the spy agency Kroll, that the Moldovan National Bank has released. Deficiencies in 'know your customer' controls, transaction-monitoring and record-keeping came to light during the probe. The bank had failed to identify several transactions as potentially suspicious and had not reported them to Latvia's Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity (Control Service).

Headquartered in the central Ukrainian town of Dnipropetrovsk, and owned mainly by Ukranians, the 2,500-branch PrivatBank has been improving its performance lately, recently introducing a new Bitcoin system that allows online merchants and e-commerce portals to accept Bitcoin payments directly from their customers. Other recent good news came from Fitch Ratings, which stated earlier this month that it had upgraded PrivatBank's long-term foreign currency issuer default rating to 'CCC' from 'RD' (restricted default) on completion of the bank's external debt restructuring. The bank increased its regulatory capital by $220 million and fulfilled its recapitalisation programme last month.