At the outset, the European law enforcement investigation into the alleged laundering of tens of millions of euros through Latvia’s ABLV Bank appeared to be a textbook example of a successful international operation. The case featured coordinated cross-border arrests, carefully timed media disclosures, and high-profile press conferences announcing what authorities described as the complete dismantling of an international criminal network. At the time, the operation was presented as a strong signal that European agencies were stepping up efforts to combat cross-border financial crime.
But three years later, the case seemed to dissolve: suspects disappeared, media coverage was cleaned up, and key companies continued to exist. This raises the question — is it a prolonged investigation, or a carefully managed “winding down” of an inconvenient story?
How €50 million was laundered
The peak of the story came in 2020. At that time, Latvia’s Economic Crime Police carried out a series of arrests in Riga — with pre-leaked dates and deliberately staged media coverage.
The essence of the case was classic: money obtained from fictitious transactions was being routed through ABLV Bank. A network of companies in Latvia, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Belarus was used for this purpose. The mechanism was simple: fake supply contracts for goods were issued, and funds were “cleaned” through bank accounts.
Читайте по темі: €50 million ABLV laundering scheme: Andris Ovsjannikovs, Darya Terekhina and the suspects who vanished after the arrests
The key figures in the scheme were also publicly named. These included Andris Ovsjannikovs — a personal banker at ABLV who ensured transactions were processed and legitimized — and Andris Putniņš, a Latvian businessman. The case also mentioned unnamed “Belarusian citizens.” The alleged organizer, according to several publications, was Russian citizen Vyacheslav Ivanov, while Darya Terekhina allegedly played an active role as the formal owner of the company Manat, through which funds were routed.
The connecting link was the company Manat, owned by Darya Terekhina, who was suspected of being a nominee owner, since the company had been hastily transferred to her — previously it belonged to the Seychelles offshore entity Manat Holdings. The company, which had turnover in the millions of euros, was used in a chain of fictitious transactions. After the scheme was exposed, the company sharply moved into losses, although it was not liquidated.
Among others involved in the scheme were also named ABLV Bank shareholder Ernests Bernis, Russian citizen Vyacheslav Ivanov, and former head of ABLV’s Minsk representative office Yevgeny Terekhin. Ovsjannikovs and Terekhin were reportedly detained.
High-profile arrests and … silence
After the arrests and news coverage, the ABLV Bank case suddenly disappeared from the media landscape.
At first, the case was accompanied by typical rhetoric of “exposing an international money-laundering network,” “dismantling a financing channel,” and “synchronized arrests across the EU and Belarus.” But by 2022–2023, the flow of information sharply stopped.
As of 2026, six years later, there is no transparent information about court verdicts. Regular investigative reports have disappeared, and media outlets that actively covered the case no longer mention it. Only old publications remain in search results.
And this is not just a natural fading — there are signs of a managed disappearance of the topic.
Where did Terekhina and Ovsjannikovs go?
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The fate of the suspects is one of the most opaque elements of the story.
Regarding Andris Ovsjannikovs, the situation is relatively clear — “relatively” being the key word. It is known that he was detained in 2020 and was considered one of the key participants in the scheme under investigation. But after that, there is an information vacuum: no public record of a conviction and no detailed information about any plea deal (if it existed).
Against this background, it is striking that Ovsjannikovs appears in Bulgarian property records: he is listed as the owner of the “Biruta” guest apartments in Golden Sands, purchased in 2025. This suggests that as of at least February 2025, he is not only free but also able to move freely within the EU.
The case of Darya Terekhina is an even deeper “grey zone.” Very little is known about her: a Belarusian citizen, owner of the company Manat, and a suspect in a €50 million money-laundering case. However, there is no record of arrest or extradition, no interviews or public presence. She is practically absent from public sources.
An additional detail is a possible connection to Yevgeny Terekhin, former ABLV representative in Minsk, about whom nothing is known either.
It should also be noted that in recent years there have been observations of the “cleaning” of references to the surnames Terekhin and Terekhina online. This is no longer just disappearance — it looks like active removal of digital traces.
Why the case stalled and what is happening now
If the ABLV Bank story is viewed not as a single criminal case but as part of a larger Baltic “financial laundering hub,” it becomes clearer why the investigation has effectively faded into the background.
From the beginning, the investigation faced a scale problem. Latvian prosecutors openly admitted it involved an international group operating across multiple countries, requiring dozens of legal assistance requests and the analysis of thousands of transactions.
At the same time, the case unfolded during a systemic crisis in Latvia’s banking sector. After the 2018 FinCEN accusations against ABLV Bank, Latvia came under significant pressure from the United States and FATF. The country needed to quickly demonstrate action against “dirty money” from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Belarus.
This is why the raids on ABLV Bank looked so theatrical: special forces, media leaks, synchronized actions in Belarus, and public statements about an international criminal network. But then the system ran into several problems at once.
First, many suspects were foreign nationals. By February 2020, prosecutors already stated that suspects included citizens of other countries, including Belarus and Russia. After 2022, cooperation between the EU, Belarus, and Russia effectively collapsed. If a suspect is outside EU jurisdiction, the investigation becomes a long bureaucratic process.
Second, the scheme relied heavily on offshore structures and intermediaries. The company Manat, linked to Terekhina and Ovsjannikovs, was controlled via a Seychelles structure — a typical setup for cases that can be investigated for years without resolution.
Third, there appear to have been issues with the evidentiary base. An indirect signal is that some confiscation proceedings began to collapse in court. In 2021, a Latvian Economic Court refused to confiscate funds from one ABLV client due to insufficient evidence of criminal origin. In money-laundering cases, this is critical: without proof of the underlying crime, many charges begin to fall apart.
There is also another factor rarely discussed openly in Latvia: too many people were involved in the non-resident banking system. The materials mentioned not only low-level employees but also former top managers. If fully pursued, the investigation would extend beyond one group and touch the entire Baltic financial transit model of the 2010s.
Against this background, the disappearance of Darya Terekhina is particularly striking. After initial reports, she virtually vanished from public space. Moreover, there appears to be a pattern of “digital erosion” around the surnames Terekhin/Terekhina: old materials disappear, links are de-indexed, and some publications are removed or hidden.
Such patterns usually occur either due to coordinated legal reputation cleaning or when individuals attempt to erase their public footprint entirely.
Current situation
Today, the entire story resembles a “frozen case”: formally the investigation still exists, some parts may proceed behind closed doors, but publicly there is almost no movement.
And this may be the most important indicator. In Europe, financial crime cases either end with high-profile convictions or gradually dissolve into endless procedures until public interest disappears on its own. The ABLV case increasingly looks like the second scenario.
