{"id":586650,"date":"2026-10-08T12:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T09:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=586650"},"modified":"2026-10-08T12:24:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T09:24:52","slug":"latvia-bans-russian-and-belarusian-citizens-from-owning-critical-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/latvia-bans-russian-and-belarusian-citizens-from-owning-critical-infrastructure","title":{"rendered":"Latvia Bans Russian And Belarusian Citizens From Owning Critical Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Russian and Belarusian citizens will not be able to acquire a substantial ownership stake in or exercise decisive influence over critical infrastructure facilities in Latvia. The Latvian parliament adopted the decision on Thursday, Oct. 8, <a href=\"https:\/\/eng.lsm.lv\/article\/economy\/economy\/08.10.2026-russians-belarusians-banned-from-owning-critical-infrastructure-in-latvia.a666691\/\">LSM.lv reports<\/a>, citing news agency LETA.<\/p>\n<p>Critical infrastructure is divided into several categories \u2014 A, B, C and D. The latter covers infrastructure whose destruction, reduced functionality or disruption of critical services in the event of war would pose a significant threat to public and national security.<\/p>\n<p>This includes, for example, food production and distribution, heating, the distribution of medicines and other sectors.<\/p>\n<p>Category D covers processes rather than specific facilities. Therefore, it has so far been difficult to track whether citizens of aggressor states are involved in these processes and in what way. The amendments establish that such citizens cannot be ultimate beneficial owners or exercise indirect influence over these processes.<\/p>\n<p>The amendments stipulate that a beneficial owner&#8217;s stake must amount to at least 10% of a company&#8217;s share capital or voting shares.<\/p>\n<p>Latvia&#8217;s Ministry of Defence, together with the relevant sectoral ministry, must determine by Dec. 1, 2026, whether any organizations included in Category D of critical infrastructure have persons linked to Russia or Belarus with a substantial ownership stake or decisive influence, and whether such persons are the ultimate beneficial owners of these organizations. The ministry must then submit proposals to the Ministry of the Interior to remove the relevant organizations from Category D of critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian and Belarusian citizens will not be able to acquire a substantial ownership stake in or exercise decisive influence over critical infrastructure facilities in Latvia. The Latvian parliament adopted the decision on Thursday, Oct. 8, LSM.lv reports, citing news agency LETA. Critical infrastructure is divided into several categories \u2014 A, B, C and D. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6ac7616764dde.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Latvia Bans Russian And Belarusian Citizens From Owning Critical Infrastructure"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338,143284,143090,143126],"tags":[143171],"class_list":["post-586650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","category-politics","category-business","tag-latvija"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586653,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586650\/revisions\/586653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}