Company type | Private company |
---|---|
Industry | Financial services |
Founded | 1992Riga, Latvia | in
Key people | Valērijs Kargins, Viktors Krasovickis |
Products | Banking |
Parex Bank was a Latvian bank founded in 1992 by Valērijs Kargins and Viktors Krasovickis as a privately owned full-service banking company in Riga, Latvia that was very dominant in currency exchange in the 1990s. It had local and international clients in both the West and Russia with close ties to the Tambovskaya Russian mafia in St Petersburg and Vladimir Putin.
As the second largest bank in Latvia in 2008, its failure and state takeover was one of the major events of the 2008–2010 Latvian financial crisis.[1] On 1 August 2010, Parex Banka was split into a new bank Citadele Banka and Reverta, an asset recovery company.[1] Citadele was then sold to a group of United States investors while Reverta sued the founders Kargins and Krasovickis for €88 million due to 14 highly irregular loans and deposits between 1995 and 2008.[1]