Grigory Guselnikov, a Russian banker with a UK passport, has sold his majority stake in Latvian PNB bank, the bank said on June 28.

The bank’s announcement came a day after Guselnikov tweeted about the move. PNB, earlier named Norvik, was at the centre of the controversy that embroiled Latvia’s central bank governor Ilmars Rimsevics in early 2018 and which has continued to haunt Latvia since.

The scandal began when Guselnikov reportedly claimed Rimsevics attempted to extort money from him in return for making “successful banking” possible in Latvia. 

That spurred Riga’s anti-corruption police to start an investigation, which is still ongoing and was recently expanded with charges of money laundering against Rimsevics.

The case cast a new and unwanted spotlight on Latvia as the hub of financial crime in which a number of the country’s banks were exposed as participants. In one of the most prominent cases, Latvia’s third largest bank by assets ABLV shut down last year after the US financial authorities said it was involved in transactions facilitating operations of the North Korean regime.

"A group of US and European investors have decided to take over the majority shareholding in AS PNB Banka. Such a decision has been taken following the assessment of the economic potential of Latvia and Latvian banking sector,” PNB said in a statement.

In a sign of the new shareholders looking to changing course, they “have no interest in pursuing PNB Banka’s court proceedings against the Republic of Latvia, the Financial and Capital Markets Commission and the European Central Bank,” the bank said.

The European Central Bank took over direct supervision of PNB in March.