Fake names and miserable wages: what it’s like to work in the Kremlin-friendly local Russian language newspaper.

It’s not political parties or the Kremlin hiding behind pseudo news sites in the Latvian Facebook – at least for now.

Latvian members of the European Parliament, Iveta Grigule (ZZS) and Andrejs Mamikins (Harmony Centre), are circumventing the parliament’s rules preventing conflicts of interests and employing each other’s relatives as interns, Re:Baltica has found.

Almost half of Latvians earn less that 500 euro a month before taxes. Government agrees to increase a minimum wage by 10 euro, leaving country behind its Baltic neighbours.

Estonia and Lithuania can. Why not Latvia?

Children of Uzbekistan’s elite has bought property in Latvia, used country to give birth to first-family child and allegedly used local banks to handle millions of dollars in bribes. While more than 1,500 Uzbeks have taken advantage of the country’s controversial “golden visa” program, it remains a silent and closed community.

When a nephew of Uzbekistan’s president bought two hotels in the Latvian capital of Riga, he couldn’t have foreseen that the acquisition would turn into something like the plot of a thriller, reminiscent of the early 1990s of eastern European capitalism, featuring attempted murder, a bribed judge and accusations of larceny. Like a detective novel, this saga shines a light on the darker corners of the Latvian legal system — from the police to the courts.

Former KGB officer who after collapse of USSR became a millionaire as an intermediary in Russian gas trade to Latvia appears to be instrumental in helping high-ranking Uzbek security officials to gain a second base in Latvia.

Will pressure from the United States, fear of losing the last dollar correspondent account and an impending vote on admission into the OECD finally force Latvia to curb the laundering of dirty money for shady figures from the former Soviet Union via Latvia’s non-resident banks?