The sins of the father?<p>I wonder if there's more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye here. It seems very strange to me that Lithuania, who has put a massive amount of effort into becoming a friendly location for fintechs would risk alienating such a big company on such a flimsy pretext as the founder being Russian with a Russian father at Gazprom (I'm ignoring the server piece because I don't know what to make of that - Russia is a big market and if they wanted to expand I believe they need to have servers locally and it may be a cost cutting move).<p>edit to add sources for context:
<a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/emoney-authorisation-lithuania/" rel="nofollow">https://sifted.eu/articles/emoney-authorisation-lithuania/</a> - article describing Lithuania's push to become a fintech capital
<a href="https://investlithuania.com/key-sectors/technology/fintech/" rel="nofollow">https://investlithuania.com/key-sectors/technology/fintech/</a> - Government website describing the process and their 'forward thinking' regulation
<a href="https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/05/apple-russian-user-data-local-servers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/05/apple-russian-user-data-...</a> - article about Apple's storing of some user data on servers in Russia to comply with the local data law
They should loose their license for their business practices [1] irregardless if they have ties to the Kremlin.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/33454/tales-from-the-dark-side-of-the-revolut-revolution-cfo-resigns" rel="nofollow">https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/33454/tales-from-the-da...</a>
All I care about is that my funds are safe. I currently have a lot in Revolut, I've had nothing but positive experiences with them but moving to another bank is not a big deal for me.
> The Lithuanian government has accused Revolut of having Kremlin ties before, which reached boiling point when it was reported that the company would be moving all of its servers to Russia.<p>That I did not know. I was an early user of Revolut but I've been done with them for a while (their marketing team is responsible for me dropping it). Time for me to send them a GDPR removal request I guess. They don't provide any way of deleting your account other than going through their awful chat support system so I guess I'll have to suffer through that again.
May be not related to the headline, but Revolut is locking many accounts without any reasons and not much can be done... Would be nice to know where to send a complaint about them in Lithuania, any ideas?
Let me explain what's actually happening.<p>Some context first.<p>Lithuania's Central Bank (Lietuvos Bankas) is currently led by a rather modern team which created a process that allows fintech companies to acquire "money institution" or bank licence in a sandboxed environment. That means that companies can only do non-risky business (like transfers) with a special oversight. LB was/is quite vocal about their interest in attracting companies from the UK in a post-brexit Europe as a banking licence in Lithuania is valid in the whole EU.<p>The person that leads the central bank is Vitas Vasiliauskas and he is strongly supported by the current president.<p>Quite a few companies have shown interest in this fast-tracked process (even Google opened their branch). Revolut was one of them, as it is really popular in Lithuania. I believe, that Lithuania is the third country by the number of Revolut users (a year ago 3% of the population were using Revolut).<p>The commission (The Commission of Budget and Finance) that's responsible for the investigation is lead by Stasys Jakeliūnas. He is a member of the current ruling pro-peasant party. The commission itself is a part of the parliament.<p>One of the other things that the commission is also currently investigating is the way the government has handled the crisis of 2008 and the role that the banks have played when interested rates were being adjusted. The government was led at that time by the current opposition.<p>The meat of the story.<p>Next month there is going to happen the elections for the parliament of the EU, and a few weeks after a presidential election. In 2020 MP elections are going to happen.<p>The current consensus is that whatever Mr Jakeliunas is doing is for the sake of the elections. Their (LŽVS - peasant) party electorate is rather uneducated and hates banks (banks=evil) in general so doing something against the banks is supposed to score points.<p>Since the current president supports the candidate that's not supported by LŽVS, going against LCB and Vasiliauskas is supposed to score some points for their candidate (or rather something against the other leading candidate). Also, they intend to score some points against the current opposition party which is leading the polls due to the supposed connection in mishandling the banks and the crisis itself in 2018.<p>Finally, since Revolut is backed by the investors (DSI Global) that are originally from Russia and one of the Revolut's founders is Russian that's another batch of free points because Lithuanian public hates Russia due to rather well-known reasons.<p>So just you know, LCB and VSD (Valstybės Saugumo Departamentas - CIA equivalent in LT) has done a thorough background check on Revolut and found no national security risks.<p>I hope this paints a much clearer picture and I didn't miss anything important.<p>TLDR; Jakeliunas is playing his part for the election and in the process of doing that he is doing irreparable damage to the global image of Lithuania.