In the file of informants of the KGB of the LSSR, there is a card of the co-owner of Baltic International Bank Valery Belokon (Valērijs Belokoņs) .
According to the agent’s card, Valery Belokon was recruited in 1987 by the fifth department of the KGB of the Latvian SSR, which was engaged in the fight against ideological sabotage.
As you know, this unit was created in 1967 and until 1990 controlled religious denominations, creative intelligentsia, students, among whom it sought out dissidents.
When recruiting, Valery Belokon was assigned the pseudonym “Balls”. At that time, according to the document, he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper “Soviet Youth” and was a member of the CPSU.
Valery Belokon prefers not to comment on his “squealing past”. But after the restoration of independence by Latvia, he continued close contact with many former KGB officers. In particular, with the hero of our publications, former high-ranking official Yuri Shabashov, who, by the way, has been in a civil marriage for many years with Larisa Kondrakhin, the daughter of KGB General Nikolai Kondrakhin.
The day before, the Latvian portal Kompromat.lv published an article about the Russian business of Valery Belokon’s closest associate, the former head of the economic security department of the Satversme aizsardzības birojs, SAB, Arnolds Babris.
This ex-counterintelligence officer has never been officially accused of anything. However, his name was repeatedly mentioned in the press in connection with many scandals and even tragedies, from meat smuggling to the murder of Vyacheslav Listsov, head of the Ludza regional branch of the State Revenue Service. In 2008, due to the dubious reputation of Arnold Babris, the party “Society for a different policy” (Sabiedrība citai politikai) refused to join its ranks.
Almost immediately after his dismissal from SAB, Arnold Babris managed not only to become a business partner of Valery Belokon, but also to create the Conservative Party with him, from which in 2004 the banker and the ex-chekist ran for the European Parliament together.
Note that Arnold Babris is among the most quoted businessmen from Latvia by Russian propagandists.
But that’s not all. In 2004, Yuri Shabashov and Arnold Babris (the shares were registered in his company Baltic Strategic Security Alliance) established the PVB enterprise.
According to Kompromat.lv, in 2010, the Riga mayor’s office, under the direction of Nil Ushakov, intended to allocate to this company former intelligence officers no less, but a significant part of the Daugava bank for casinos and gambling halls.
According to the former officer of the KGB of the LSSR Boris Karpichkov, the success of the former “clerks” can be explained by their cooperation with the Russian special services.
In 2016, the Office for Combating Economic Crimes (Ekonomisko noziegumu apkarošanas pārvaldes, ENAP) conducted searches at Baltic International Bank. Special forces took part in operational operations, which acted in black masks. Our sources say that Beloknya was warned in advance by Ints Kyuzis, who at that time headed the State Police. The general also planned to go to work for a banker after retiring, but was elected to the Riga City Council from the Unity party.
Evgenia Litovchenko.
During the investigation, a top manager of the bank was detained: Evgenia Litovchenko, director for the development of markets in Eastern Europe.
The lady was responsible in BIB for interaction with the Ukrainian representative office.
– Evgenia and Valery have a joint child. But he married Katya Kuznetsova, who is now Ekaterina Belokon, says Victoria Monro, an expert on Latvian official and unofficial bohemia.
In the same year, 2016, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FKTK) fined the bank 1.1 million euros. The supervisory authority stated that BIB repeatedly violated the provisions of the law on the prevention of money laundering.
