Black Sea grains trade caught in crossfire of Baltic banking shakeup

The agricultural trade on the Black Sea has become inadvertently caught up in the fallout of a banking scandal in Latvia and Estonia, with accounts summarily frozen, leading to losses and payment delays, market sources told Agricensus this week.

Sources said they had received notice from Latvian and Estonian banks in the past fortnight explaining their accounts were blocked for both debit and credit functions, while also warning that any incoming payment in dollars would be credited to the account in euros.

“It’s affecting everyone who is not a resident in Latvia,” said one grains trader in Ukraine affected by the situation.

“I know at least five traders registered in Estonia who have had to move their accounts,” the source added.

While there is no indication the grains trade was targeted specifically, the move has affected traders, brokers, and logistics operators on the Black Sea, who have had their accounts frozen and been forced to move their banking operations to different countries.

Agricensus approached five banks named by the trade, although they either declined to comment on individual cases or were unable to be reached.

Implications

While the increased burden has not translated into higher prices in the Black Sea grains market, delays to sending and receiving payments and the cost of converting currency has eaten into margins and led to losses.

“We are going to lose a lot on euro/dollar exchange rates. We have to accept that,” one trader who did not want to be named told Agricensus.

“We stopped all payments into [our Latvian bank account] and are now only accepting them into our account in Cyprus,” the source said.

As well as banks in Cyprus, banks in Malta, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Switzerland were all touted as potential replacements for Latvian and Estonian lenders.

Fallout

The account closures come in the wake of ABLV, Latvia’s third-biggest lender, collapsing in controversy last month.

ABLV had been accused by US authorities of money laundering, bribery, and flouting international sanctions against North Korea, with the bank going into liquidation.

While ABLV denies the charges against it, other lenders have moved to distance themselves from the fallout, with local media reports in Estonia suggesting thousands of non-resident business accounts may have been closed in a bid to clean up the industry’s image.