(Bloomberg) -- Ilmars Rimsevics, the Latvian central bank governor who's forbidden to leave the country amid a corruption probe, asked to attend this week's meeting of the European Central Bank's Governing Council in Frankfurt.
The request from his lawyer received no answer from Latvia's anti-corruption bureau and Deputy Governor Zoja Razmusa will participate in the session in his place, the Leta news service reported. Rimsevics's lawyer, Saulvedis Varpins, said in an interview that the governor will keep trying to overturn bail terms that bar him from leaving the country and is preparing to challenge limits placed on his freedom to work in an appeal to the European Court of Justice in the coming days.
The request to sit in on the first monetary-policy-setting session since the allegations highlights the conundrum that the burgeoning scandal poses for President Mario Draghi: while he must defend the independence of the ECB and its policy makers from interference and intimidation, he also wouldn't want to risk putting the central bank's weight behind someone accused of a crime.
While Rimsevics's lawyers plan to appeal his bail restrictions at the ECJ and in Latvia, they are also sending information on the case to the ECB's legal department.
“It's more of a one-way communication -- we're constantly sending information, translations of some stories,” Martins Kveps, a lawyer for Rimsevics, said in an interview. The communications also include legal opinions about his case.
Rimsevics was briefly detained for bribery and extortion more than two weeks ago and has since been considered a suspect by Latvian authorities who've been slow to provide the ECB with enough information to make an assessment on the case. He denies all allegations and resumed working on ECB-related issues last week.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alessandro Speciale in Frankfurt at aspeciale@bloomberg.net, Aaron Eglitis in Riga at aeglitis@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Gordon at pgordon6@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley, Andrea Dudik
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