After the indictment of former State Chancellery head Jānis Citskovskis in the so-called case of former Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš’s (New Unity) flights, the Prosecutor’s Office is not disclosing whether any other person still retains the right to defence in the case.
This week, the Prosecutor’s Office announced to the media that one person has been charged. Latvian Television’s Panorāma reported that the accused is Citskovskis.
However, at the beginning of the year, before the case was taken over by the Prosecutor’s Office, the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) confirmed to the LETA news agency that there were two persons in the case with the right to defence, both of whom were employed at the State Chancellery at the time of the alleged offence.
Today, the Prosecutor’s Office did not disclose to LETA whether, following the charges against Citskovskis, any other person still retains the right to defence. Therefore, it is unknown whether there is currently another person in the case who has been given the status of a suspect or against whom criminal proceedings have been initiated.
As reported,
at the end of March 2024, the Prosecutor General’s Office initiated and handed over to KNAB a criminal case
on possible large-scale embezzlement related to the use of charter flights in the former Prime Minister’s official trips.
The Prosecutor General’s review found that for the special charter flights organised between 2021 and 2023, larger sums were spent than provided for in the contracts signed with travel agencies for organising such flights.
Later, the Prosecutor’s Office decided to take over the criminal case from KNAB. By decision of the supervising prosecutor, the case was removed from the investigative body and assigned to a prosecutor as the lead investigator.
The State Audit Office’s review concluded that the unlawful and uneconomical organisation of Kariņš’s special flights had caused around 545,000 euros in
unjustified expenses to the budgets of both Latvia and the Council of the European Union.
According to the State Audit Office, information obtained during the review indicates that decisions on and implementation of the use of special flights for foreign trips involved the then-Prime Minister Kariņš himself, as well as his directly subordinate Prime Minister’s Office and the State Chancellery. At the time, the Prime Minister’s Office was headed by current Saeima member Jānis Patmalnieks (New Unity), while the State Chancellery was headed by Citskovskis.
Initially, in connection with the Kariņš flight scandal, Citskovskis was temporarily suspended from his position. He later left the State Chancellery altogether.
It has also been reported that, after reviewing a whistleblower’s report, the Chair of the Supreme Court, Aigars Strupišs, this spring initiated a review to determine whether there were grounds for dismissing the then-Prosecutor General, Juris Stukāns. The report had been written by Viorika Jirgena, the former supervising prosecutor in the Kariņš flights case.
As the magazine Ir reported, Jirgena had raised concerns that Stukāns had insisted on bringing charges against a person for whom she saw no legal basis to prosecute.
The Supreme Court Plenary, after assessing the review’s findings, found no grounds to remove Stukāns from office.
This summer, Stukāns unsuccessfully ran for another term as Prosecutor General.
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