Complicated schemes have been used to legalize them in order to hide the final beneficiaries through a long chain. KNAB, in co-operation with Polish and Czech law enforcement agencies, continues to disrupt financial flows.
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“There were definitely about 20 European investigation orders and letters rogatory sent to different jurisdictions – both European countries and abroad,” says Andrejs Lisenko, head of the Investigation Division of the Criminal Procedure Investigation Department of the KNAB.
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“I can mention the countries of the European Union and also countries from which it is more difficult to obtain information, such as Hong Kong, China. Information was also received from neighboring countries, including Cyprus, which means that the range of countries is very wide.
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Some are required to provide information on accounts, some are required for companies, some are for persons who own or are involved in opening businesses. “
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KNAB is waiting for answers to about five more requests for information, after which further directions may need to be investigated. Therefore, the office does not yet predict how soon the next phase – prosecution – could follow. The case has two supervising prosecutors from the Anti-Corruption Coordination Unit of the General Prosecutor’s Office, with whom Juris Ločmelis is overseeing the investigation in Poland and Māris Urbāns in the Czech Republic.
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Prosecutor Urbāns does not believe that three years would be too long to investigate such a case: “The amount of this possible bribe has definitely been several million. The investigation examines some versions of how these bribes were paid, excluding, say, non-promising versions and stopping and further checking the more reliable versions. (..)
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It must be understood that tracking financial flows around the world is not a one-year event. (..) And so we just have to assume that it will be some time before we get to the end of this case. ”
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Urban adds: “It is not that the investigation has stopped at the moment and we are simply waiting for answers to legal aid requests. Another direction is the analysis of the already obtained information on financial flows, the analysis of the obtained data carriers. ” The Latvian authorities have also been assisted in analyzing this information by the European Anti-Fraud Office, or OLAF, which has been quite valuable, the prosecutor said.
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There is currently only one former official among the suspects, Leon Bemhens. He is also one of four defendants – former RS board members – in a civil case in which the company is seeking damages of € 1.3 million from hiring 16 potentially fictitious consultants. The examination of the case has not really started – the request of Bemhena’s representative to perform an IT expertise of the RS electronic document system was discussed at a remote meeting held this week. At the beginning of the new year, the court will decide whether to suspend the proceedings for the duration of this examination, which would mean that the case would take even longer.
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In addition to the four former board members, 15 consultants or their representatives are already participating in the case as third parties. This week, former Riga councilors Jefimijs Klementjevs and Andris Bērziņš, a former public relations specialist, former journalist Konstantīns Gānins under the pseudonym Kazakovs, and former activist of the Harmony Youth Association Alexei Futs represented themselves in court. As regards the consultancy contracts concluded with them and the others, RS now states that they were fictitious or at least completely unnecessary.
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