On 1 April 2010, the United States Department of Justice announced a settlement with Daimler AG of $185 million for paying bribes in Latvia and other countries.
Latvian authorities refuse to prosecute the bribe recipients and intermediaries.
The Latvian media refuses to mention Parex Bank in articles about the Daimler settlement even though Parex financed the transaction.
pdf snapshop:
link:
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/April/10-crm-360.html
The following document contains some details from the United States Department of Justice case against Daimler AG, dated 22 March 2010.
Bribes to Russian officials went to Latvian bank accounts.
Shortly after the announcement of the Daimler settlement came an announcement that HP also paid bribes to Russian officials through a Latvian bank. Those bribes were paid to the Russian Prosecutors Office.
Nobody has been prosecuted anywhere for any of these crimes.
pdf snapshop:
link:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/cases/daimler/03-22-10daimlerrussia-info.pdf
This document from the United States Department of Justice indicates that a company paid bribes to Riga City politicians to sell buses in 2000.
The accusation must refer to the sale of buses from Solaris of Poland to Riga Transportation (formerly Imanta and Talava). The sale was financed by Parex Bank.
Nobody has been prosecuted. The names “Solaris” and “Parex” have been censored from all Latvian media articles on the subject. And, Solaris continues to sell buses to Riga now in 2012.
Interestingly, the Latvian media did determine that former Riga mayor Gundars Bojars must have been involved. Bojars’ involvement is not surprising since he was also involved in the notorious ”Baltic Kristina” deal with Parex. Nobody was prosecuted in that case, either.
Bojars is currently free and rich. He is cooperating with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg to construct a new building for the Latvian State Revenue Service.
pdf snapshot:
link:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/cases/daimler/03-22-10daimlerag-info.pdf
John Christmas was the whistleblower from Parex Bank. He gave fraud information to Ernst & Young in 2004. He gave fraud information to the Latvian government in 2005. He was terrorized with threats and fled from Latvia. Ernst & Young and the Latvian government ignored the information.
The Parex fraud grew much larger and caused the Latvian Financial Crisis in 2008.
Now in 2012, there still has never been any investigation of the whistleblowing by Latvian (or European) authorities even though the fraud occurred in Latvia (and Europe).
This is a declaration written by John Christmas in January 2010. The declaration was written at the request of Varu Tautai. A translation (with a few errors) used to be online at VaruTautai.lv. Most of the information in the declaration has been censored in the Latvian media.
One note: In January 2010 when the declaration was written, it appeared that the FBI and United States Department of Justice were not going to use the information that they received from Christmas in October 2007. However, in April 2010 it was revealed that the information was used in the USA versus Daimler settlement. The FBI was back in communication with Christmas immediately after the announcement of the settlement.
