The state has failed to monitor the recovery of public funds invested in the airline airBaltic during the Covid-19 period and has largely acted as a “wallet to draw from,” the State Audit Office has concluded. Meanwhile, former Ministers of Transport Tālis Linkaits (JKP), Jānis Vitenbergs (NA), and Kaspars Briškens (PRO) deny any responsibility in this matter. Should former ministers bear political or other responsibility for this? BNN posed the question to political analyst and co-owner of the company “Mediju tilts”, Filips Rajevskis.
According to Rajevskis, in this context, political responsibility is not the correct framework — a deeper form of accountability is at stake. “Political responsibility applies to political decisions, which largely fall under the competence of the Saeima. Political accountability is assessed during elections, when voters either re-elect or reject parties and politicians. In the case of airBaltic, the issue is not political responsibility, but how money is spent and invested in a commercial company. Therefore, it is inappropriate to talk about political responsibility here — this is about the responsibility of public officials, because we are talking about enormous sums of taxpayer money.”
When asked by BNN how to determine which official — including ministers — is more or less responsible for the hundreds of millions of euros loaned by the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, which have in essence been “written off as losses,”
Rajevskis replied: “Every decision has a name and a surname.”
Asked how to identify the officials actually responsible for specific decisions, the political analyst said this falls within the scope of the State Audit Office and the Prosecutor’s Office. “We must speak about the responsibility of officials, because behind all these decisions — on expenses, spending, changes in plans and more — stand boards, supervisory councils, and shareholder representatives who made and approved these decisions. There are numerous officials who had the duty to sign these documents, make decisions, and be accountable for them.”
The State Audit Office has concluded that at no level of oversight — neither within the Ministry of Transport nor the Cabinet of Ministers — have there been actions aimed at facilitating the recovery of state investments. By contrast, the Prime Minister’s party New Unity claims that the government has done everything possible to preserve Latvia’s national airline airBaltic, including state-backed loans.
Should the government take responsibility for the failure to recover taxpayer money? Rajevskis argues that official responsibility extends to the Cabinet of Ministers as well — government members must be accountable for their decisions, not only politically but also functionally.
When asked whether it is possible in Latvia for public officials to be held genuinely accountable for wasting taxpayer money, for lost or unrecovered EU funding, for prolonged decision-making and bureaucratic delays that have caused construction projects to become tens of millions more expensive, Rajevskis responded that it is difficult to say today — but he remains hopeful that the era of impunity in squandering Latvian and EU taxpayers’ money will eventually come to an end.
“It is inevitable that at some point, this will happen. Inaction, loss of EU funds, and failure to implement projects all cause damage to the state — and that too is the responsibility of public officials,” the political analyst emphasized.