Banks, Financial Services, Latvia

The liquidation costs included salaries paid to the bank's staff, severance pay to the laid off employees, the liquidator's salary, costs of maintenance and selling the bank's assets, costs of the publication of the bank's announcements, court fees and other expenses.

Nothing Personal, an analytical news program of TV3 commercial television, reported last Sunday that the bank's liquidator Ilmars Krums had outsourced EUR 6.9 mln worth of services for the bank's liquidation purposes. Trasta Komercbanka representative Ozola claimed, however, that the "report about the EUR 6.9 mln worth of outsourced services was untrue".

She said that Krums had paid to the providers of the above services with his own salary but did not use the bank's money. The representative, however, would not disclose the price paid by the bank's liquidator for the services, saying that this is confidential information which has nothing to do with Trasta Komercbanka's expenses.

Ozola also noted that information on the bank's liquidation costs is regularly published in the official gazette Latvijas Vestnesis in line with the Credit Institutions Law.

According to the bank's monthly reports that have been published so far, the costs of the bank's liquidation reached EUR 8.13 mln at the end of September. This amount included EUR 3.265 mln paid in salaries to the bank's liquidator and his assistant.

As reported, the European Central Bank (ECB) has revoked Trasta Komercbanka's license, based on a proposal submitted to the ECB by the Financial and Capital Market Commission, and the bank's operations were halted on March 3.

According to the Financial and Capital Market Commission, Trasta Komercbanka has been operating with losses for a long period and has no viable business model or development strategy adequate to the situation. In addition, serious and sustained breaches of the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations were identified in the bank's activities.

On March 14 the court in Riga ruled to begin the liquidation process of Trasta Komercbanka and appointed a liquidator, lawyer Ilmars Krums.

According to preliminary results, Trasta Komercbanka closed 2015 with EUR 4.663 mln in loss, down 2.7 times from 2014. At the end of September 2015, Trasta Komercbanka was the 12th largest Latvian bank by assets, and the 13th largest bank by attracted deposits, according to the Latvian Association of Commercial Banks.