In May this year, officials of the National Police General Office for Combating Economic Crimes completed an investigation into the case for the fraud of EUR 100 000 from a Latvian company. The criminal offence was committed by a bank employee who took office, illegally using client trust and obtaining signatures from a representative of the company in a financial collateral agreement.
Mentioned bank member misled the representative of the cheated company about the true content of the document, which, without the knowledge of the “security provider”, was used as collateral for the provision of bank credit to the partly owned company of the bank employee concerned. As a result of the actions, the credit was not returned, but the bank exercised the right to pledge and recovered the amount of debt from the funds in the “pledge” account.
The law enforcement investigation showed that the credit money obtained on the basis of the falsified financial collateral transaction of the bank employee concerned was transferred to a neighbouring company where the cash was removed. In view of the fact that the criminal offence was designed so that the victim could already find out about it in the “post factum”, there was no possibility of stopping the drain of funds during the investigation. However, in criminal proceedings, the property of the suspected person was arrested.
It has been established that, in the context of a series of other offences, the bank ceased its relationship with the suspect before the initiation of this criminal proceeding.
Evidence of a person's involvement in criminal activities – large fraud activities – was strengthened, and in May this year the criminal case was referred to the Public Prosecutor's Office for Financial and Economic Crimes for the initiation of criminal proceedings.
Prepared by:
Elina Priedite
Senior Officer of the
Public Relations Division of the State Police
Tel. 67075093
Mob. Tel. 29600629
E-mail: elina.priedite@vp.gov.lv