The court extended the detention for two months on Wednesday for two persons who were arrested in mid-June in a 65,000-euro bribery attempt by the State Revenue Service (SRS), the Minister of Finance Jānis Reirs (JV) said on Wednesday in the Latvian Radio program “Krustpunkts”.
The Minister repeatedly criticized the SRS for not providing information to the public about criminal offenses in the service.
“Today’s court decision shows that the SRS Internal Security Board has done a good job and the court has found the evidence to be sufficient to keep these persons in custody, however, the SRS does not inform the public about it,” said Reirs.
The Minister also emphasized that even after his call to inform the public, the SRS published information only on disciplinary cases, while there was no information on 31 criminal proceedings initiated against SRS employees.
It has already been reported that in June the SRS Internal Security Board detained an organized group of persons who demanded a bribe in the amount of 65,000 euros with the aim of handing it over to an SRS official.
The SRS agency LETA was informed that the mentioned amount was requested with the aim to ensure that the SRS official, using the position of the service, would ensure in-depth and tends to perform unfavorable inspections in relation to specific companies.
Two former SRS officials, as well as one current SRS official have been recognized as suspects.
In total, five persons involved in the offense were granted suspect status during the investigation, while two of the suspects were remanded in custody by a court.
TV3’s “Nekā personīga” previously reported that the attempted bribery was related to the purchase of technical salt for road maintenance and in the detained group center is a long-term SRS employee Sandis Ozoliņš, who now works at the National Defense Military Facilities and Procurement Center.
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