Latvian lender Rietumu Banka has been fined €80m by the Paris court for helping taxpayers and small businesses in France dodge taxes.
The court ruled that the bank helped clients launder more than €200m. As a result, the bank has been ordered to stop operations in France for five years, while its chairman and president of the board Alexandre Pankov has been issued a prison term of four years.
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The bank has however, expressed its disagreement with the decision and said that it will appeal.
“We will carefully examine the full text of the decision and together with our attorneys decide about further actions,” the bank said in a statement.
Rietumu Banka also said that it “fully cooperated” with French judicial authorities during the probe.
“We have never been involved in the tax evasion and that neither the bank, nor its President personally had any interest in these actions. Therefore the imposed fine of 80 million EUR and sanctions against the President of the bank appear widely ungrounded,” the bank added.
