Bizarre forgery case comes to suspicious close

  • 2006-02-15
  • From wire reports
TALLINN - A criminal investigation into Maardu Mayor Georgi Bystrov was closed on Feb. 14, after police found no proof that the high-profile Russian-speaking politician cheated on his Estonian language exam. The mayor allegedly sent a native Estonian speaker to take the test in his place.

Although Bystrov has long been suspect for misusing his driver's license for the test, police and the Prosecutor's Office neither filed charges against him nor sent his case to court.

"Police were unable to prove in the course of the investigation, which lasted more than two years, that Bystrov was linked to the unidentified male who went to give a language exam in his place. Neither could they determine how his driver's license appeared in the hands of an unknown individual," senior prosecutor with the North District Prosecutor's office, Luule Pello, told the Baltic News Service.

She said police were unable to identify the male individual who used Bystrov's driver's license before taking the exam. If identified, he could have become a key witness in the case.

Reports over the mayor's language exam first surfaced in 2003, when a registration application was filed with Bystrov's name on it. During the testing time slot assigned to Bystrov, a male individual showed up at the examination center, producing Bystrov's driver's license. When the examining official raised doubts about the man's identity, he ran away, leaving the driver's license in the hands of the examiner.

A couple of hours later, police officer Artjom Lofitski arrived at the center to claim the driver's license. According to the officer, he had stopped a car driven by Bystrov earlier on the same day in the Mustamae district of south Tallinn and drawn up a traffic violation. The driver had explained that he was on his way to the Mustamae hospital after feeling sick during a language exam and that his driver's license remained at the examination center, Lofitski said.

Suspicion soon lead to a criminal investigation, where it was determined that the officer couldn't have encountered Bystrov in Mustamae because, according to his mobile phone's positioning record, he was not in that part of town.

Lofitski then admitted that he had forged the record of Bystrov's violation, and that he had never caught the mayor on any wrongdoing, prosecutor Kristel Eliste said. The officer was unable to offer any logical explanation as to why he had forged the record.

Lofitski was fined 19,200 kroons (1,227 euros) for falsifying documents in his capacity as an official.

After the policeman's lie was brought to light, the mayor of the predominantly Russian-populated town, located east of Tallinn, started using his right to abstain from testimony.

"Bystrov has given no testimony in the criminal investigation launched against him. It was revealed, however, that the application received by the examination center was not written by Bystrov," Pello said.

Since Bystrov's link to the offense could not be proved, the Prosecutor's Office ended the criminal investigation.