Banks, Covid-19, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation

Citadele board member Kaspars Jansons said that the guaranteed compensations worth EUR 255 million have been paid out to 94.5%, or around 44,500 clients who had deposited their money with PNB banka.

Around EUR 15 million have yet to be paid in guaranteed compensations to 15,000 depositors, Jansons informed.

Considering the state of emergency that has been declared in Latvia because of the Covid-19 pandemic and travel restrictions introduced for the emergency period, Citadele has temporarily stopped accepting compensation claims from individual PNB banka clients who are not Latvia's residents, as well as legal entities whose representatives are not Latvia's residents. The bank continues to accept compensation applications from Latvia's residents.

As reported, the Financial and Capital Market Commission on August 15, 2019 suspended PNB banka’s financial services, including the execution of customer payments, in order to avoid an outflow of the bank’s funds.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has assessed that PNB banka in Latvia was failing or likely to fail in accordance with the Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation. According to the ECB, the bank has been in breach of capital requirements since the end of 2017.