Banks, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation

Krums' mobile phone is switched off. When LETA tried to call Spruds at his office, Spruds' representative said that he was out of office and would be away on vacation for a couple of days, telling LETA to call back on Monday.

LETA also has information that several searches were carried out on Wednesday by the State Police's Economic Crime Department.

Andrejs Grisins, head of the Criminal Police Administration, told reporters that four persons had been detained in total, including insolvency administrators. He also said the police could release further information sometime next week.

Latvian Administration of Certified Insolvency Procedure Administrators told LETA it had no information why the two administrators had been detained by the police.

At the moment, Krums is insolvency administrator at Trasta Komercbanka. TV3 new program Neka Personiga (Nothing Personal) reported last year that during the liquidation process, Krums had spent almost EUR 7 mln on various services, and the bulk of that amount went to Krums himself. Recently the broadcast reported that Krums may have failed to observe a court decision, and the Economic Crime Department had opened a criminal case to investigate this.

The Financial and Capital Market Commission previously turned to Riga Vidzeme Court, asking that Krums be fired as Trasta Komercbanka's insolvency administrator. The court will continue reviewing the matter on June 19.

Spruds has in the past been involved in a number of major insolvency processes that came under media scrutiny for various incongruities. According to magazine Ir, the Justice Ministry's former parliamentary secretary Aigars Lusis (National Alliance) paid EUR 3.2 mln to acquire debt obligations of Peltes Ipasumi, a company that had been declared insolvent in 2011 and where Spruds was the insolvency administrator. Peltes Ipasumi owned a land plot of over 40 hectares in area at Lake Kisezers, and the EUR 3.2 mln had been taken from the bank account of Dzimta Seta, another company where Spruds was the insolvency administrator.