Deputy mayor suspected of corruption

TALLINN - Tallinn Deputy Mayor Leivi Sher from the United People's Party of Estonia may be forced to leave his job due to corruption allegations, which have resulted from what the party thinks is an organized slur campaign against it.

Sher, one of the key figures in the mostly Russian party, heads the security and integration department of the municipality. This deals with crime and AIDS prevention, and also the integration of Tallinn's large Russian-speaking minority into the mainstream.

Sixty-year-old Sher has been holding his current position since November 2000. He is also a board member of the Legal Information Center for Human Rights and deputy head of the Journalists Association of Estonia.

An article by the Aripaev daily made the claim that over 4 million kroons ($240,000) of the integration and security department's 10.5 million kroon budget for 2001 has slipped into the pockets of non-profit organizations connected to United People's Party members.

For example, Integratsiooni Meediagrupp, a non-profit organization created by the political party's board members to uncover some of the secret locations where the city's criminal underworld meets, received 400,000 kroons.

Kardis, a legal consultancy headed by party board member Vladimir Vaingort, got about 118,000 kroons.

An Estonian online political magazine, Larko, totted up the sums Sher donated to his party-related projects and concluded they were bigger than the entire budget of a similar Helsinki city department.

As Aripaev pointed out, many of the integration and security projects had vague goals, such as "the stimulation of integration processes" and "the creation of positive thinking."

At a party board meeting, Sher supported the decision to resign and announced he would do it on Nov. 12. But then he changed his mind. He announced that day that he had three projects to complete and quoted Tallinn Mayor Tonis Palts as saying nobody wanted him to leave.

Galina Panchenko, managing director of the department, was fired on Nov. 8. She is planning to take the municipality to court and insists she was doing her job correctly.

As the City Council tries to work out what to do with Sher, the board of the United People's Party sees the whole episode as an orchestrated media campaign against Sher. It is a master plan concocted by political rivals, who probably include independent Councilmen Leonid Tsingisser and Pavel Starostin, the party's general secretary, Anatoli Yegorov, said.

However, even if Sher eventually agrees to go, the party will keep his post according to city coalition rules.

Viktor Andreyev, chairman of the United People's Party of Estonia, said he was sure the money Sher directs has not been used for funding the party.

"If any members of the party were among those who received the money, it was because their projects were better or because there were no other rival projects at all," he said.