This email seems to show that Aivis Ronis slandered Parex Bank whistleblower John Christmas to the Wall Street Journal in 2007.
Ronis used to be the Latvian Ambassador to the United States. But, by 2007, he ran the Latvian-American Financial Forum. LAFF was a lobbying group with a purpose of convincing the United States government not to blacklist Latvia’s Baltic International Bank. Oligarch Valery Belokon of BIB is known for his close relationships with Boris Berezovsky, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and Alexander Lukashenko.
Even though Ronis was supposed to be working for Valery Belokon of BIB, not Valery Kargin of Parex Bank, it appears that Ronis committed a slander crime against the Parex whistleblower for the purpose of stopping the WSJ from publishing a story about the frauds at Parex. It is a shame that the story was stopped, because that story could have prevented the Latvian Financial Crisis by forcing Parex to close one year before the government bailout.
Did Ronis get prosecuted for his action? No. He got promoted! First, he became Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now in 2012, he is Latvian Transportation Minister.
Notice that the WSJ journalist, an expert on corruption in Russia and Ukraine, believes that Parex is a violent criminal organization. In this email, he warned the whistleblower to “be careful.”
Latvian newspapers refuse to publish this email. The email used to be on Kargins.com, however the Latvian government has censored that website.
