President orders prosecutor general to probe allegations of attempted election rigging

RIGA - President Edgars Rinkevics during a meeting with Prosecutor General Juris Stukans on Thursday ordered an investigation into allegations of attempts to rig the results of the 2014 Saeima elections.

The president's advisor Martins Dregeris told LETA that in accordance with Section 16 of the Office of the Prosecutor Law, the president asked the prosecutor general to take the necessary steps and probe whether security and law enforcement authorities have received any reports or information about attempts to rig the outcome of the parliamentary elections in 2014. Rinkevics ordered the prosecutor general to probe the allegations and report on the results of the probe to the president and the public. 

Renars Kadzulis, CEO of IT company SOAAR, claimed on Latvian Television on Wednesday that Unity party's secretary general Artis Kampars had asked SOAAR, the provider of voting software at the 2014 parliamentary elections, to rig the election results in order to ensure then Unity chair Solvina Aboltina's election to the parliament. Kadzulis admitted that he has no evidence to prove that such a conversation took place, but said that he alerted law enforcement authorities to it. 

Rinkevics met with Stukans on Thursday to discuss the allegations. 

Kadzulis, who is accused of fraud in the procurement of the Central Election Commission, said on the TV program that on the night of the 12th Saeima elections in autumn 2014, Kampars had called him for a chat and expressed concern that Aboltina might not have enough votes to get into the Saeima. "We need you to make sure she gets elected," Kadsulis allegedly recounted Kampars saying ten years ago.

"I say, do you understand what you are asking, you are asking to falsify the election results. I will never set foot on that path in my life. And I refused," Kadzulis said.

He said that these allegations could only be proved by the fact that Aboltina was not elected in the end, but entered the 12th Saeima after Janis Junkurs, elected from the Unity list, resigned from the Saeima. He announced that he had received a job offer in a Hong Kong company. However, his declaration as a public official did not show a job with a Hong Kong company, which led to the conclusion that he had left the Saeima to make way for Aboltina.

Kadzulis said that he had reported the matter to the Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), but did not receive any response. "I reported it several times to the SAB. Do you think something happened? It is like a wall there, just like in the Corruption Prevention Bureau (KNAB). At one point, hands come down to report something because nobody does anything," said Kadzulis.

Latvian commercial TV3' television reported earlier that Unity had used the SOAAR system for voting at its congresses free of charge for eight years. The KNAB has launched a departmental inquiry into this.

The prosecutor's office is currently investigating fraud in an IT procurement organized by the CEC. Kadzulis is one of the accused in this case. The company he heads has repeatedly won tenders from the CEC and the Office for Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

According to Firmas.lv, SOAAR is owned equally by Kadzulis and Leonards Survilo. In 2020, the company's turnover was EUR 1.12 million and its profit was EUR 675,000, while no data is available for later years.