By Ilze Znotina
Former Head, FIU Latvia; Member of the Management Board, Augstsprieguma tīkls AS
TODAY (Friday) is a big day for Latvia. The Constitutional Court has upheld the non-conviction-based confiscation framework we established in 2019 – reaffirming our commitment to fighting illicit financial flows.
Given Latvia’s long-standing role as a transit hub for dirty money, building an effective asset confiscation system was both a challenge and an opportunity. When I was leading the 2018-2020 reforms, our team faced strong pushback.
One the reasons beingprecisely because the framework worked. I defended it in many times in many fora – from articles to expert panels, and debates, and today, the court’s decision confirms what we knew all along: our approach strikes the right balance between procedural fairness and the public interest.
It allows us to go after illicit assets while upholding the rule of law.
But our goal was always bigger than avoiding FATF grey-listing. We wanted to protect national security and move beyond the old image of Latvia as a “bridge between East and West” – a reputation that made us a gateway for CIS dirty money.
That illicit capital didn’t just weaken us, it fuelled Europe’s and many other regions dependencies and blurred the real threats posed by Russia and its proxies. As the world wakes up to the political dangers of tainted funds, I am proud of what we achieved.
I am deeply grateful to my colleagues with whom I had the privilege and joy of being, so to speak, the ‘founding fathers and mothers’ of this framework: Laila Medina, Līga Klavina, Dina Spūle, Inese Ratfeldere, Aleksejs Loskutovs, Andrejs Judins, Igors Gerasimovs and Yehuda Shaffer, Stefan Cassella (apologies if I have forgotten to mention somebody; there were lot of us). Your expertise, resilience, and belief in this mission made all the difference.
For me this achievement marks an incredible closing of an AFC chapter in my professional life. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending. We did it!
Although it’s in Latvian, I am absolutely certain it will become a textbook example for others, you can find the court decision here: https://lnkd.in/d3K9gBMU
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