The activities of Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) have been a source of contention in corruption-prone Latvian politics for years, as the appointment of personnel has often become politicized based on who the agency has been investigating.
RIGA — Latvia’s ever-controversial Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau has again come under fire from politicians, and a commission is being set up to investigate its activities.
The National Security Council decided on Saturday to ask Latvia’s Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis to set up a special commission, headed by acting Prosecutor General Arvīds Kalniņš, to evaluate the bureau. President Valdis Zatlers requested that the bureau be questioned about its performance. The president’s press office announced that the decision had been reached after discussing the National Security Law.
Institutional representatives will include the Saeima Defense, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention Committee, the National Security Council’s secretary, Constitutional Protection Bureau director, the interior ministry and justice ministry state secretaries and Security Police chief will review the work of the bureau.
Though internal corruption is off the table, unlike in the past, the commission will evaluate the bureau’s efficiency and hand down recommendations for optimization. It will have until Sept. 1 to present findings.
The bureau’s chief and Normunds Vilnitis and his both deputies, Juta Strike and Alvis Vilks were grilled in the meeting prior to the decision to request the commission.
Anti-corruption forces embattled
Given the high level of corruption and crony capitalism in Latvian politics, the bureau has been the cause of political battles in the past.
Aigars Kalvītis was forced to resign from the prime minister’s office in 2007 after his dismissal of then-bureau chief Aleksejs Loskutovs after his investigation of the “Jūrmalgeitas” scandal cost Ainārs Šlesers his transport minister post and also implicated former Prime Minister Andris Šķēle and businessman Germans Milušs in the bribery of Jūrmala city council members in exchange for supporting the mayoral candidacy of Juris Hlevickis, a Latvia’s First Party member. Both Šķēle and Kalvītis are in the People’s Party.
The general prosecutor’s post has not been free from similar conflicts, either. The reinstatement of General Prosecutor Jānis Maizītis was blocked in April under a secret Seaima ballot after his corruption investigation of Ventspils Mayor Aivars Lembergs resulted in a one-year jail sentence. The Lembergs-controlled Greens and Farmers Union was the most hostile to a third term for Maizītis and grilled him with the most questions prior to the vote.
— Baltic Reports reporter James Dahl contributed to this article.
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