Lawyer is concerned that the prosecution is allowing seized assets to disappear

In Latvia, evidence and seized property, the storage of which is identical in criminal cases, tends to disappear, but complaints about the illegal actions of the prosecutors are not examined on their merits - they are referred for evaluation to the same official against whom the complaint is directed, says sworn advocate Gatis Dirnēns.

G.Dirnēns is a defense lawyer in a criminal case of bribery in which the material evidence - honey - has disappeared. It has been established that the honey was removed from the register of material evidence and was eaten by schoolchildren in Jelgava (for more details, see the publication of January 4 "Eating the evidence in a criminal case is considered legal by the prosecution").

In this case, you could say that there was a silver lining, as the product seized in the criminal case did not disappear without a trace and ultimately benefited Latvian schoolchildren. By contrast, there has been no clarity on the assets seized in the Lembergs criminal case, worth several hundred million, because the Latvian state can't get to them.

Prosecutors have been claiming for sixteen years that they have deposited the seized assets with a Swiss citizen, Rudolfs Meroni, but he claims that he has not actually taken possession of anything, only signed the papers put in front of him by the prosecutor.

For the time being, it is only clear that the person appointed custodian of the assets with the blessing of the public prosecutor and her trusted people benefit concretely from these assets, but for the time being it is not known what benefits also accrue to the public officials who do everything to keep the Latvian State away from these assets.

G.Dirnēns in the Lembergs criminal case represented the victim SIA Man-Tess, which was renamed SIA T2 Termināls. More actively than others, G. Dirnēns pointed out to the court that the most valuable assets of the seized property were being given away; he called for legal aid requests to be finally sent abroad so that the property that was only claimed to be the seized property would finally be actually seized; he also called for the real assets (e.g. shares in JSC Latvijas naftas tranzīts) to be seized, not limited to the seeming seizure of foreign shell companies. However, the court and the prosecutor's office remained deaf to G. Dirnēns' efforts.

Asked whether it has not become a common practice in Latvia for unlawful actions to be taken in criminal cases with seized property or physical evidence, G. Dirnēns replied, "Admittedly, such cases do occur. One of the cases is the Lembergs criminal case, in which it took several years before the court also acknowledged that the seized property disappeared during the trial. But in the criminal case [of bribery with honey], as soon as we received the criminal case files, we found that the physical evidence of the honey had not been returned to the owner and that the physical evidence had not been handled in the way prescribed by the Cabinet of Ministers in such cases. The material evidence has been given to a third party, unrelated to the case, and the valid reasons for such an action not provided for by the law are not understandable at this time."

Speaking about the importance of physical evidence in criminal cases, lawyer G. Dirnēns said: "As it has been established in a number of court decisions, physical evidence is the material of a criminal case. There are criminal penalties for the illegal handling of materials of a criminal case. When asking the Prosecutor's Office to assess these circumstances, the Prosecutor's Office had to take one of two decisions, as required by the Criminal Procedure Law: a decision to open criminal proceedings or a refusal to open criminal proceedings. In cases where a person asks for an assessment of the existence of a criminal offence, there are no other legal options - one of these decisions must be taken. Instead, the prosecutor's office sent the person an informative letter, the content of which read: 'We will not take a decision to initiate criminal proceedings or to refuse to initiate criminal proceedings, and we inform you that these circumstances will be assessed by the court.' The Criminal Procedure Law does not provide for such an informative letter to be sent in response to a request to assess the existence of a criminal offence.

In other words,

the Prosecutor's Office informs that it will decide itself when it will deal with a particular application in accordance with the procedure laid down by law and when it won't."

"Moreover, it is clear to every person that the consideration of a complaint aimed at yourself is not only unlawful per se but also points to the illegality of permissiveness. In this case, we had to deal with a situation where an officer was considering complaints about himself and did not even respond to an invitation to take action as required by law, referring the complaint to the jurisdiction."

Asked whether the disappearance of evidence from a criminal case could affect its adjudication, G. Dirnēns explained, "It has to be admitted that there is no longer any physical evidence in a criminal case. According to the Criminal Procedure Law, anything that has been used as an object of a criminal offence or has preserved traces of a criminal offence, or in any other way contains information about facts and can be used as evidence, can be considered as physical evidence in criminal proceedings. One thing may constitute physical evidence in several criminal proceedings. In the present case, the physical evidence no longer exists, so it will not be possible to examine or use it in evidence. The defense still does not understand why this piece of evidence - honey - could not be returned to the owner or disposed of in accordance with the Cabinet of Ministers' regulations. The criminal case file also does not answer this question."