Latvian prosecutor's office gets scandal as a birthday present

Sep 28, 2000
TBT staff

While Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga congratulated the prosecutor's office on its anniversary and thanked prosecutors Sept. 26 for their work, the Prosecutor General's Office and the top national security agency, the Constitution Protection Office, had started to investigate media reports on their ex-colleague Olgerts Sabansks' bank accounts in Germany and luxurious houses in Riga.

The story broke on Sept. 24, when the Latvian weekly TV show "Nedela" reported that Sabansks was living in a luxurious house in Baltezers near Riga. It was reported that in 1996 Sabansks had opened an account with a commercial bank in Berlin and large sums of money had passed through the account. The account was not declared in his annual income declaration mandatory for all state officials in Latvia.

Sabansks said he had granted a power-of-attorney to his acquaintances in Germany, empowering them to manage the account, and claimed he knew nothing about money transfers.

The ex-prosecutor said he had opened the account because he intended to start a private business but then he had changed his mind and had not made any transfers himself.

So far Sabansks has failed to provide any reasonable and detailed explanation about how he had come by the posh residence. Nedela reported that the house is registered in somebody else's name.

Sabansks might have lost confidence in the media, but not of his former colleagues. Former Latvian Prosecutor General Janis Skrastins expressed his belief that his former colleague had acted light-mindedly by opening the Berlin account.

He confirmed his trust in his former colleague, saying he believed Sabansks had been honest. The truth, however, has to be found out through unbiased investigation, the former chief prosecutor told BNS.

According to Skrastins, it was another attempt "to throw dirt" at the prosecutor's office, and the scandal had been organized by the same people who last year reproached the prosecutor's office in relation to the pedophilia scandal.

Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga believes that a system should be created to make the prosecutor's office more transparent and accountable, because the present situation creates certain grounds for irresponsibility and corruption.

"It cannot live just by itself in a separate world because then it is inviting irresponsibility… and corruption," the president said in her weekly interview on state radio.

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