AP Bank was the Swiss subsidiary of Parex Bank.
Parex president Valery Kargin openly said that Parex established a Swiss subsidiary because many deposit clients at Parex wanted to move their deposits to Switzerland when Latvia joined the European Union so that records of the deposits would not be in European Union computers.
As it turned out, there was no reason for Parex depositors to worry. Parex had thousands of offshore shell-company deposits and the European Union has not taken any legal action against the account holders. In fact, European Union taxpayers funded part of the bailout of these accounts.
Parex attempted to sell AP Bank to Latvijas Krajbanka before handing liabilities over to the Latvian taxpayers. The sale was never completed and the public has never been told the reason.
Now in 2012, AP Bank is owned by Parex successor Citadele Bank which is owned by the Latvian government and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Interestingly, even though AP Bank is funded with public money, it still offers illegal deposit services.
Specifically, AP Bank offers to open deposit accounts with “foreign banks” in its own name but on behalf of clients. This service is illegal by Latvian law, Swiss law, and the law of (almost every) ”foreign” country as well.
Even though this service is illegal, it has been openly advertised on the AP Bank website for many years.
pdf snapshot from 18 March 2012:
link, if the website has not suddenly been changed:
