The Novum Riga Charitable Foundation, a charity fund founded by the owners of ABLV bank, which is trapped in the self-liquidation process, celebrated its five-month paralysis anniversary in November. All the money is frozen, but no information from law enforcement authorities as to why and when it will be released again. The Foundation is preparing an application to the European Court of Human Rights.
The mechanism of operation of charitable funds is as follows: money is collected from those who have a lot or who are generous, then invested in various programs to help those who do not have enough money. For sick people, lonely children, the cultural industry, etc. The Novum Riga Charitable Foundation, founded by Ernests Bernis and Oļegs Fiļs, also operated on this principle. Until June, when the Financial Intelligence Unit decided to freeze the funds. And it’s a lot of money.
The Financial Intelligence Unit has not come up with a more detailed justification either. Only this sentence - “bank accounts opened by the fund after the suspension of ABLV banka's operations in 2018 could have been used for money laundering”. In total, funds amounting to around EUR 9 million have been frozen. Most of them were savings for the construction of the future Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum has been designed, the construction project has been coordinated, but when and if it will be built at all - the proponents of the plan cannot tell at the moment, while the money seizers refuse to tell. It is very likely that they are going to nationalize this money. Just like the deposits in ABLV bank. If the basis for the imprisonment of Bernis and Fiļs could not be found, as was requested by the US government, then at least in this way it is possible to harm both bankers and thus show obedience to the overseas allies. But as a result, everyone who depends on the activities of the fund, including the Latvian cultural sector, is also harmed.
In order to find out what will happen next with the fund's savings, what is the subject of the investigation, and what is the progress of the investigation, Neatkarīgā turned to the Prosecutor General's Office. We received the following recommendation: "Given that the proceedings of the specific criminal case are directed by the Economic Crime Combat Department of the State Police, these issues should be addressed to them." Neatkarīgā also approached the State Police, and there questions were simply ignored. In principle, this was already to be expected, as any information related to US orders and law enforcement activities in the execution of this order is carefully chosen. Only information that harms the interests of ABLV bank is disseminated. For example, when talking about funds frozen in Latvian banks, it is only talked about ABLV bank. Other banks are protected by the State Police from unwanted publicity. They beat the one who is already on the ground.
To somehow defend itself, the foundation had begun to make communication with law enforcement public immediately after the funds were frozen. Now the documents are no longer distributed on social networks. Here's an explanation on the foundation's website:
"We were denied such rights by the police. It happened at the end of September, when we received a special notification about it. We are not allowed to publish the answers we receive, despite the fact that they are formal. We must write a separate request for each answer if we want to republish it. We have already received a response to one of the requests and we were only allowed to republish the introductory part of the prosecutor's response and the decision. We are still in favor of openness, so as soon as we are allowed to continue publishing this information more widely, we will resume doing so.”
The Novum Riga Charitable Foundation is celebrating the five-month anniversary of the frozen money with a statement about the forthcoming appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The application will be submitted in the near future. "We firmly believe that what was done with the fund is not fair, and we have reflected it extensively in our communication on social networks and complaints. Since June, we have submitted more than 35 complaints and applications to the police, the prosecutor's office and the court. Unfortunately, almost all have received formal rather than substantive responses, and the vast majority of our applications have been rejected."
Most likely, this will not be the only case in Strasbourg directly or indirectly related to the death of ABLV bank.
Applications to the court are also prepared by depositors tricked by the Latvian state, and since a collective action is not possible in this case, there may be several processes.