Fraud, Disinformation, and Money Laundering

The sordid story of the US Treasury, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the EBRD, Part 2

Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash

Editor’s note: Once again, I’m featuring guest author John Christmas, exiled whistleblower against Parex Bank of Latvia, co-author of the award-winning “KGB Banker” novel, and co-producer of the award-winning “Bankers Game” documentary and his continued story of massive fraud and the EBRD. You can watch the documentary below.

You can read Part 1 of this series here.

The EBRD Fraud in Latvia

The fact that Latvia secretly paid EUR 190 million to the EBRD in exchange for EUR 80 million has been revealed again and again since then by reputable organizations, although sadly all of them are allowing the fraud to continue.

Documents from the European Commission’s Eurostat confirmed the fraud.

An investigation by the Dutch Parliament confirmed the fraud.

Even an investigation by the Latvian Parliament confirmed the fraud.

My “Bankers Game” documentary linked above includes interviews with two members of European Parliament and three opposition members of Latvian Parliament explaining the fraud. Also, we asked a former prime minister from Latvia’s ruling political party which organized the fraud to comment. She didn’t deny the secret reversion and instead stated that she didn’t know why the reversion was “confidential,” apparently not understanding the cover-up.

The ruling political party in Latvia has been in power for all these years from 2009—when they started the EBRD cover-up—until now, and the cover-up continues today. The ruling party wins every election by falsifying the national debt and censoring my whistleblowing. They claim to be opposed to Putin, which is what the international media repeats, however they have been secretly paying money to protect Putin’s money launderers for 17 years.

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

Cash Flows

How this transaction must have been looked on the EBRD accounts is that they bought an asset for EUR 80 million, when its value was in fact zero. Then they revalued the asset on their books up to EUR 190 million, claiming a big profit, even though it was still worth zero.

If you read the EBRD’s financial reports, you will see that the good results are from revaluing their investments upward. This doesn’t result in cash flow. The cash flow comes from selling more bonds to the public every year. If some—or maybe all—of their other investments are similar to Parex, where the investments are actually worth zero, then the whole EBRD is a fraud pyramid.

The EBRD reversed the Parex transaction in a confusing and opaque way. Latvia capitalized a new bank called Citadele, which received most of the Parex employees, assets, and deposit clients. Latvia gave a stake in Citadele to the EBRD but left out the other minority shareholders in Parex, who lost their investments.

Then in 2013, the part of Citadele which had not been given to the EBRD was sold by Latvia to an investor group led by US billionaire Tim Collins. That group paid EUR 75 million for the stake. Readers are forgiven if they assume the group paid the EUR 75 million to the Latvian government, which was the seller.

But no.

The Collins group apparently paid the EUR 75 million to the EBRD, which was not the seller.

What???

In addition, Collins apparently hired an expert in “complex equity” from the EBRD to help him with investing, implying that Collins likely knew that Latvia was secretly paying the EBRD to invest, not the other way around, and Collins may have made a similar deal with Latvia.

Now in 2026, the public doesn’t know how much the Latvian government is paying the EBRD—and possibly Collins—for being “front” or “straw” shareholders of Citadele.

An open discussion about the issue would be nice, but an atmosphere of fear surrounds these deals, and the “state secret” designations for the terms of the EBRD-Parex deal, EBRD-Citadele deal, and Collins-Citadele deal means people who do somehow discover what’s going on and talk openly about it can be arrested and imprisoned.

The only thing openly known is that the last report about Latvia by the European Commission’s Eurostat stated that Latvia has a secret obligation to reverse the EBRD investment in Citadele for an undisclosed amount. But how “open” that information remains questionable since most voters—and most people in the government—still seem unaware of what’s happening and there are gaping holes in documentation.

Collins was on the board of Citigroup at the time of his investment. Citigroup subsidiary Citibank provides US dollar correspondent account services to Citadele. Citibank should have rejected this business if due diligence research revealed that Citadele had straw shareholders. Nobody from Citibank replied to my many attempts to contact them.

While all this was going on, trouble occurred at Ukio Bank of Lithuania. Arnis Lagzdins was Head of Compliance at Parex while Parex was top money launderer for the Tambovskaya Mafia and the assets were embezzled. Right after he left Parex, he became Head of Compliance for Ukio.

Just as Putin’s known frontman Khudainatov likely received money from Parex, the other well-known Putin “wallet” Sergei Roldugin received money from Ukio, which collapsed in 2013 and the EBRD stepped in to buy the assets as a major shareholder of Šiauliu Bankas, by backing a 2013 deal where Šiauliu took over Ukio’s assets and state-insured deposits.

The whistleblower from Ukio contacted me, explaining that the EBRD deal with Ukio was completely fraudulent and resembled Parex. He explained that the deal was designed to make the Ukio assets appear to be worth more than they really were. I have saved emails and a recorded conversation with that whistleblower. I’ve notified many people in the US and Lithuanian governments.

However, so far, nobody has been interested.

Next week, we will look at how the US Treasury was snowed by those involved in the fraud.