On 17 September this year, the Foreign Investors Council (FICIL) – known in a narrower circle as 'Ficil' from its English acronym – Foreign Investors Council, issued a call to the government to immediately make the prevention of money laundering and the freezing of assets originating from crimes committed within Latvia a priority for law enforcement agencies. This statement can be read and interpreted in various ways; therefore, I will offer my own interpretation, while acknowledging that other versions are certainly possible, though they do not necessarily exclude one another.

FICIL is saying for the first time what only a few politicians, officials and media outlets have been trying to say for over 10 years. Namely, that the responsible state services must first fight tax evasion, money laundering and corruption (all of which are often functionally very closely linked) within Latvia, rather than prioritising the investigation and prevention of non-Latvian crimes and their consequences. Unfortunately, these services have been doing so using Latvian taxpayers' money. I would remind you that FICIL has a very significant influence on government policy, as it has been a dialogue partner of the government since 1999.

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My explanation of the real situation regarding what is happening in the banking sector: the lack of willpower and incompetence of local decision-makers in planning and implementing financial sector policy have been replaced by foreign recommendations (also mostly prepared by the bureaucracy). This is compounded by the overzealousness of the local bureaucracy in implementing these recommendations, 'following the letter of the law, not the spirit'. Consequently, this has led to the over-regulation of the banking sector, which is fundamentally a brake on the development of the entire sector.

As a result of the policies of the FID/FKTK, not only have foreign depositors left Latvia. What is more, Latvian residents (natural and legal persons) and foreign companies are also abandoning Latvian banking services. Furthermore, these are globally recognised, medium to large enterprises whose international management considers the requirements dictated by the FKTK/FID and subsequently imposed by the commercial banks themselves not only cumbersome and imposing an unnecessary bureaucratic burden, but even disgraceful.