In the criminal procedure concerning possible waste of public resources on private flights used by now ex-Prime Minister of Latvia Krišjānis Kariņš, former Director of the State Chancellery Jānis Citskovskis has rights for defence, as confirmed by Prosecutor General Juris Stukāns in an interview to Latvijas Radio programme “Krustpunktā”.
When asked by LETA journalists to confirm whether or not Citskovskis is a suspect or a person involved in criminal procedures, Stukāns said that he cannot confirm whether or not the former head of the State Chancellery is officially a suspect.
“He does hold the status of a person involved in a criminal procedure. I can claim this because he was involved in the procedure and was interrogated. This means the law dictates that a person like that has the right to defence,” said the Latvian Prosecutor General.
At the end of last year, the investigation authority in charge of the procedure – the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) – confirmed to LETA that there are two people in the case who have the right to defence, and both of them were employed by the State Chancellery at the time of committing the alleged crime.
The law states, a person who is presumed or alleged to have committed a criminal offence has the right to a defence. KNAB did not disclose which of the procedural statuses provided for in the law applied to the two aforementioned people – the status of a person against whom criminal proceedings have been initiated or the status of a suspect.
At the end of March 2024, the Prosecutor General’s Office initiated a criminal case and submitted it to KNAB for investigation of possible waste in connection with the use of aircraft charter flights in the missions of the former prime minister.
The investigation by the Prosecutor General’s Office found that the special charter flights, which were organized between 2021 and 2023, cost more money than the amounts listed in the contracts signed with travel agencies for the organisation of charter flights.
Illegal and uneconomical actions in organizing special flights of Kariņš have caused a total of about EUR 545 000 in unreasonable expenditures for the budgets of Latvia and the Council of the European Union, as concluded in the audit performed by the State Audit Office.
According to the State Audit, information acquired in the audit shows that both the then Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš and the Prime Minister’s Office under his direct authority and the State Chancellery were actually involved in making and implementing decisions on the use of special flights in foreign missions. At that time, the Prime Minister’s office was headed by the current deputy of the Saeima Janis Patmalnieks (JV), but the State Chancellery was headed by Janis Citskovskis.