Lawyer Daiga Siliņa: We do not shoot. We seize

Daiga Siliņa is the lawyer against whom Ilze Znotiņa, the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia (FIU), filed a complaint with the Council of Sworn Advocates. The most powerful woman in the country was outraged by the comparison of the banking supervision system with the darkest times of Soviet rule - red terror is currently being carried out against Latvian bank customers.

However, the Council of Sworn Advocates has not seen anything illegal or unethical in Daiga Siliņa's actions. For the time being, a lawyer still has the right to express an opinion, especially if that opinion is based on facts. And so does the media.

Criminal proceedings for seizing of money

Under Ilze Znotiņa's leadership, the Latvian banking system has become not only unfriendly to the customer, but also dangerous, because the money a person has placed there can be seized with one order. For what? Nothing, really. Because the owner is bourgeoisie. Might be bourgeoisie. If not, he should prove otherwise. Just like in times of red terror. But it is virtually impossible to prove anything. A special mechanism has been set up to prevent proving this.

"In fact, criminal proceedings are currently being instituted not because a criminal offense has been committed under Article 195 of the Criminal Law (money laundering), but to deprive the owner of the right to use the money, assuming that the owner cannot reliably prove the legal origin of the money,” explains Daiga Siliņa and illustrates this thesis with some concrete examples from the lives of her clients. In the first case, the suspicion was most likely caused by a transaction of an Uzbek citizen seven years ago - the granting of a loan worth 300 thousand euros, which was later repaid by the transfer of metalworking equipment. The money was kept in Latvia like a safe, but when he wanted to buy an apartment, the bank made a report and after the money was frozen it was seized.

In another case, the decision of a Ukrainian citizen to transfer his money to a Latvian credit institution during the war proved to be suspicious, which, according to the typology, is "stratification of funds".

Non-appeal mechanism

Yes, in theory, the Latvian state gives the owners of suspicious money the right to appeal the FIU order, but they have no idea what transactions are involved. The FIU bases its orders on suspicion of committing a criminal offense under Section 195 of the Criminal Law. The order can be appealed within 30 days to the special prosecutor. However, there is also no point in appealing at all, because while an interim order freezing funds for 5 working days is being appealed, a further order freezing funds for a fixed period of up to 45 days is issued. It can also be appealed to the special prosecutor within 30 working days, who in turn can prepare a formal response within 30 days. But in the meantime, the case has long been handed over to the police and criminal proceedings have been instituted, which the special prosecutor can no longer influence.

As the lawyer explains, the Latvian banking system and the state as a whole have let down the customers’ trust in the Latvian financial sector.

“Depositors or the bank's creditors had reasons to rely on Latvian credit institutions, including the legality and security of the bank's operations and that all transactions in the course of the bank's operations are inspected and evaluated.

In fact, at present, the set of circumstances indicates that investors (foreign citizens) are being punished both for the use of Latvian banking services and for the policy implemented by the Republic of Latvia in attracting investments.

The investment of funds in credit institutions of the Republic of Latvia was facilitated by the policy of attracting investments in Latvia (according to publicly available data, within a year and a half since the amendments to the Immigration Law came into force, for residence permits in Latvia have applied 2257 investors and their family members who have invested 142.5 million lats in the Latvian economy), the motivation of Ukrainian citizens to invest in Latvia was facilitated by the Russian-backed separatist military offensive in the Republic of Ukraine.”

They can and will do as they please

Now the state policy has changed and, with retroactive effect, foreigners are being punished for having responded to the sale of temporary residence permits implemented by Latvia. In addition, there concepts are getting mixed when initiating criminal proceedings. Funds of unknown origin are not the same as proceeds of crime. Prosecutor General Juris Stukāns has also drawn attention to this. However, so far there has been no reassessment of the decisions taken by financial supervisors and the typology they use. And there is no system of accountability for unfounded orders and reports. The FIU can act arbitrarily, do whatever it wants, and there is no mechanism for evaluating FIU orders.

Why was Ilze Znotiņa, the country's chief financial intelligence, so annoyed by your comparison with red terror?

Arbitrariness, on the basis of suspicion of committing a criminal offense under Section 195 of the Criminal Law, the FIU freezes funds by transferring materials for the commencement of criminal proceedings and is not responsible for the content and consequences of its orders. In accordance with the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism and Proliferation Financing, the FIU is operationally independent and an institution of direct administration under the supervision of the Cabinet of Ministers, but the Cabinet of Ministers exercises institutional supervision through the Minister of the Interior. On the other hand, according to the explanation of the Minister of the Interior, supervision does not include the evaluation of acts issued by the FIU. This means that the legality of FIU orders is not subject to review, FIU is not responsible for its orders and is exempted from the obligation to inform money holders of certain factual and legal circumstances underlying the presumption that their funds have been obtained by crime. At present, it is not possible to get anyone to evaluate the actions of FIU officials and their legality. The order cannot be based on the general phrases that the transactions are suspicious and the account has been used to commit a criminal offense under Article 195 of the Criminal Code.

Why red terror... Did the people who once shot, destroyed, persecuted and took away property bear any accountability for what they did? In the same way, no accountability.

Respectively, the essence of this comparison is that they can now do anything unchecked, including breaking the law.

Yes! That is the mechanism that is currently in place. The criteria for freezing funds are unknown, suspicion is sufficient. The visible criteria are the amount of money and the person's country of residence outside Latvia. No other criteria can be seen at this time. According to the applied typology, any resident of Latvia can be suspicious. But a foreigner is suspicious right away.

In a democracy, the presumption of innocence is like a commandment. Why is there this one category in which this principle does not work?

Here we return to the red terror. What were their slogans at the time? What did they fight against?

Against the bourgeoisie.

And what slogan do we have now? Fight against money laundering. Slogan. And action? No, we don't shoot, we seize. And the owner of the damaged property has no mechanism to defend his rights. He is in a deplorable situation. We together with the client provide our objections, but the process does not set deadlines for the person conducting the proceedings to review our documents and state whether it is sufficient for him or not, credible or unreliable. We keep waiting.

We do not even have an article in the Criminal Procedure Law that would allow the person conducting the proceedings to make a decision to lift the arrest if the presumption of criminal origin of the funds has not been confirmed.

Therefore, applications are currently being prepared for the European Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, we are also forced to get involved in this. This work is carried out in collaboration with colleagues abroad.

Recently, several high-level officials have said that banking supervision has fallen into a ditch. President, Prime Minister, Minister of Defense. But Znotiņa replied that no - nothing is in the ditch.

Znotiņa said that she wanted to know what was behind these suspicions.

You can see how to get out of that ditch. Fire Znotiņa?

I do not know what needs to happen for Latvia to understand that the time for this reality show is over. FIU must bear accountability, as do all officials who accept these orders. At the moment, I expect active action from the Attorney General. If he has found that in 50% of the cases there are no suspects in the end and no money laundered, then he must make a decision. The persecution of people must stop, they must not be punished for trusting the Latvian financial sector. I am in favor of people having clear defense mechanisms. For cases to be evaluated by their essence. People should not be misled. The Prosecutor General's Office should have a department that assesses whether or not criminal proceedings should be instituted on the basis of FIU reports. Because they are the ones who then uphold the accusations.

You have called on all those who are fighting for the interests of bank customers to join forces in the fight against the current system. As this system should be like. What about the time of Viesturs Burkāns? These days, his name has become almost a profanity.

This is not acceptable, it cannot be allowed. Someone else has now come and is raising their influence in this country, but we know what the effect of this is. The economy has suffered, the financial sector has been destroyed. Who will foot this bill? The state budget already includes seized allegedly criminally obtained money and this measure takes place at the expense of taxpayers. Do we have to be thankful for that? Time will tell. But as long as court rulings state that the money was obtained as a result of an unidentified criminal offense, this arbitrariness will continue. Money obtained criminally can only be obtained as a result of a specific crime. Reports should not be based on assumptions, but at present FIU is very far from reality.

P.S.

At the beginning of the year, Daiga Siliņa submitted a request to the Cabinet of Ministers and the State Chancellery to establish a commission that would investigate the legitimacy of initiating criminal cases and suspend Znotiņa from office.There is no commission, Znotiņa is in office.