ABLV impunity gap: How Andris Ovsjannikovs and Darya Terekhina outplayed the European investigation

When the probe into the suspected laundering of tens of millions of euros through ABLV Bank began, it was framed as a coordinated effort across Europe.

The operation featured arrests, calculated media leaks, and declarations of dismantling a vast transnational criminal syndicate.

But three years later, the case seems to have dissolved: the suspects have disappeared, the information field has been cleaned up, and the key companies continue to exist.

The question arises — is this a protracted investigation or a careful “wrapping up” of an inconvenient story?

With Darya Terekhina, things enter a real “gray zone.” Almost nothing is known about her: a Belarusian citizen, owner of Manat, a person of interest in the €50 million money laundering case.

There is no information about her arrest or extradition, no interviews, comments, or public traces.

Her personality is almost non-existent in open sources.

An additional detail is her possible connection to Yevgeny Terekhin, the former head of ABLV Bank’s representative office in Minsk, about whom nothing is known either.

It is also worth noting that in recent years there has been a noticeable cleanup of mentions of the surnames Terekhin and Terekhina on the internet.

This is no longer just disappearance — it is an active deletion of the digital footprint.

Why the case stalled and what is happening now

If we look at the ABLV Bank story not as a standalone criminal case but as part of the larger “Baltic laundry hub,” it becomes clear why the investigation has effectively gone into the shadows.

From the very beginning, the investigation faced a problem of scale.

Latvian prosecutors openly admitted that it involved an international group operating in several countries, requiring dozens of mutual legal assistance requests and the analysis of thousands of banking transactions.

At the same time, the case unfolded against the backdrop of a general crisis in the Latvian banking system.

After the U.S.

FinCEN accusations against ABLV in 2018, Latvia came under enormous pressure from the United States and the FATF.

The country needed to quickly demonstrate a fight against “dirty money” from Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Belarus.

That is why the searches at ABLV looked so demonstrative: special forces, leaks to the press, synchronized actions in Belarus, and loud statements about an international criminal network.

But then the system ran into several problems at once.

First, a significant portion of the suspects were foreigners.

As early as February 2020, the prosecutor’s office reported that among the suspects were citizens of other states, including Belarus and Russia.

After 2022, cooperation between the EU, Belarus, and Russia virtually stopped.

If a person is physically outside EU jurisdiction, the investigation turns into an endless paperwork process.

Second, the structure of the scheme was built through offshore entities and layers.

The company Manat, linked to Darya Terekhina and Andris Ovsjannikovs, was historically controlled through a Seychelles structure.

This is a typical architecture for cases that can be investigated for years without a final result.

Third, the investigation apparently began to have problems with the evidence base.

An indirect signal is that some asset confiscation proceedings started falling apart in court.

For example, in 2021, the Latvian Economic Court refused to confiscate money from one of ABLV’s clients due to insufficient evidence of its criminal origin.

There is also another factor that is discussed cautiously in Latvia: too many people turned out to be connected to the system of servicing non-resident money.

The materials mentioned not only ordinary employees but also former top managers of the bank.

If the chain is followed to the end, the investigation inevitably goes beyond the story of one group and touches the entire model of the Baltic financial transit of the 2010s.

Against this background, the fate of Darya Terekhina looks particularly strange.

Formally, her name was linked to the key company in the scheme, but after the first publications, she practically disappeared from the public space.

Moreover, there is a noticeable “digital erosion” around the surname “Terekhin/Terekhina”: old materials disappear, links stop being indexed, and some publications are removed or hidden from search.

Such things usually happen either during a targeted legal cleanup of reputation or when the figures are trying to completely erase their public footprint.

Today, the whole story resembles a “frozen case”: formally the investigation exists, certain episodes may be proceeding in closed mode, but there is almost no public movement.

And this may be the most important indicator.

In Europe, financial crime cases either end in high-profile convictions or gradually dissolve in endless procedures until public interest fades away by itself.

The ABLV story increasingly looks like the second option.