Article 5 of the Administrative Liability Law defines an administrative violation as an unlawful, culpable act for which liability is provided for in a law or in regulations binding on municipalities.
A fine, if imposed on any person, must be paid voluntarily within the prescribed term, otherwise the decision proceeds to compulsory enforcement.
This account does not lead to a punishment, but to a question concerning the legal basis of the election result: the 746 ballots placed into storage had to be verified before being added to the total count and, if a voter had voted more than once, annulled. The Central Election Commission (CVK) did not act voluntarily, but because the instruction on the counting of ballots provided for this as a mandatory sequence — first verification, then counting. The legal question arising here is the CVK's competence to alter the very instruction it had itself approved in the course of election day, and whether the precinct commissions were required to wait until the verification was completed. These questions would be resolved not by the Administrative Liability Law, but by the regulation of electoral law — the Saeima Election Law and the CVK decisions adopted in its implementation. The sources provided contain only extracts from the Administrative Liability Law, and therefore they can substantiate only what system of liability would exist in general if a violation were found in the commissions' conduct — not the actual procedure for counting ballots.
The duties of members of election commissions are not set out in these sources, and therefore the specific elements of the violation, if any existed at all, must be sought in electoral legislation. The types of sanctions are generally set out in Article 14 — a warning and a monetary fine as principal penalties, and deprivation of rights and a prohibition on exercising rights as supplementary penalties; the extract of Article 18 shows that a prohibition on exercising rights may be imposed for a period of one month to two years and may be provided for only by law. Article 19(2) links the measure of the sanction to the nature of the violation, the person's character and financial situation, while Article 20 lists mitigating circumstances. A decision imposing a sanction must indicate the legal basis, the evidence, the sanction applied and the appeal procedure, and in the event of non-payment of a fine the decision is referred for compulsory enforcement.
The practically possible scenarios of the proceedings are as follows:
Does a political party's internal decision to expel a candidate from the party affect that candidate's status on an already registered Saeima election candidate list?
Legal basis: This analysis rests on general principles of law, as the database contains no direct extract from the Saeima Election Law. In electoral law, the principle of the immutability (stability) of a registered list operates: once registered, a candidate list becomes an irrevocable electoral document, and the party's internal organisational freedom (expulsion from membership) is distinct from the candidate's procedural status in the electoral process. The rights attached to a candidate's mandate can be terminated only by a decision of the election commission based on grounds expressly enumerated in the statute — the will of the party does not fall within that enumeration. This principle derives from the documentary character of the electoral process and the guarantee of voter information: the voter votes for a specific, registered list, not for the party's current membership composition.
Practical significance: Parties must bear in mind that the filter of candidate selection must be exhausted before the list is submitted to the Central Election Commission (CVK) — after registration, expulsion from the party is a purely political, not a legal, instrument, and the party cannot achieve the removal of a candidate's name by means of its own statutory decisions. In practice, this means that a sanction imposed by the party's Ethics Commission and a board decision of expulsion have no effect on the candidate's number of plus-marks or prospects of election; if Dalbiņš is elected, the mandate will be valid irrespective of his membership status. The point of risk for the party lies in reputation and internal control, not in any breach of the Election Law. The point to monitor going forward is the CVK's aggregation of preliminary results in Vidzeme (the remaining 15 polling stations out of 273) and the confirmation of the final results, which will determine whether the expelled candidate obtains a parliamentary mandate.
Correction: The article's enumeration of the grounds for amending candidate lists is substantively correct, but incomplete and lacking a precise reference. The formulation visible in the evidence, taken from the Municipal Council Election Law — "Registered candidate lists may not be withdrawn, and amendments to them may be made only by the commission that registered the list, in one of the following ways" — confirms the principle itself, but it applies to council elections, not to Saeima elections; the analogous provision of the Saeima Election Law must be cited directly. It would be more accurate for the article to state that the grounds for amendment constitute a closed enumeration in the statute, and that the commission (CVK) acts only in the presence of those grounds, not at its free discretion upon a party's application.
Section 5 of Article 1 of the AAL provides that directly applicable regulatory enactments of the European Union governing administrative liability form part of Latvia's administrative liability system.
Section 1 of Article 8 of the AAL attaches administrative liability to an official only for offences committed by a public-law legal person where it has failed to perform a duty prescribed by law for whose non-performance liability is provided.
The officials mentioned in this story — the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs — face neither administrative liability nor any penalty: what has occurred is a political conflict over the position on EU sanctions, not an administratively punishable offence. A point unknown to the reader is that the EU sanctions system itself is nonetheless legally connected to Latvia's administrative liability architecture — Section 5 of Article 1 of the Law on Administrative Liability (hereinafter — the AAL) provides that directly applicable regulatory enactments of the European Union governing administrative liability form part of Latvia's administrative liability system. The direct legal question raised by the report is: what is the legal liability of Latvian government officials for the decision to extend the sanctions regime and for the public exchange of opinions surrounding it. The answer must be sought in Article 2 of the AAL, which defines the administrative liability system as consisting of regulatory enactments establishing offences, penalties and procedure, and in Article 8, which holds an official liable only where that official has failed to perform a duty prescribed by law for whose non-performance administrative liability is provided. The actions described in the report — abstaining in the vote, a compromise on the removal of two persons, public reprimands — do not appear anywhere in the cited sources as administrative offences carrying a specified penalty.
Section 1 of Article 5 of the AAL sets out the purpose of the law — to protect the legal order and the order of administration by ensuring an effective procedure — but it applies only where the conduct in question can at all be qualified as an administrative offence. Section 3 of Article 2 of the AAL provides that offences, penalties and the competence of officials are determined by the laws regulating the relevant sector or by binding municipal regulations; consequently, in the field of sanctions, liability could arise only from directly applicable EU acts or from a sectoral law, neither of which is mentioned in the report. If, however, an official were to be held liable, Section 1 of Article 8 of the AAL applies to officials of public-law legal persons, while Section 3 of Article 8 provides that liability is imposed on an official as on a natural person. The proceedings would follow the procedure laid down in the AAL: having examined the case, the official adopts a decision imposing the penalty or terminating the proceedings (Articles 125 and 154 of the AAL), and the decision must indicate the legal basis, the penalty and the appeal procedure (Section 3 of Article 125 of the AAL and the extract from source 3). Indeed, upon examining a complaint, a court may adopt one of the rulings provided for in Article 227 of the AAL — leave the decision unaltered, quash it and terminate the case, quash it and impose a penalty, or amend the measure of the penalty. The international dimension: Section 2 of Article 2 of the AAL and the extract from source 11 confirm that the execution of, and appeal against, a binding decision adopted in a foreign state likewise fall within the same system. In the situation described in the report, none of these mechanisms is activated, since the sources contain neither the elements of an offence nor the commencement of proceedings by a competent authority.
The real consequences for both officials are political, not legal: on the eve of elections, a public assessment is forming of their negotiating skills and their ability to work within one government, which the sources characterise as a public conflict between two list leaders. For the market and for the sanctioned persons, the practically most significant outcome is the substance: the list of approximately 2,600 sanctioned persons, including Putin, has been extended for three years, while Usmanov and Fridman have been removed at the initiative of France and Luxembourg, with Latvia abstaining. The Latvian government must henceforth reckon with the possibility that in similar extensions a demand may recur to accommodate the removal of individual persons, and the report notes that in the previous similar case the government's mandate was circumvented — this creates the risk that next time the coordination of positions will be contested politically rather than in an administrative procedure. If any party nevertheless attempted to attach liability to an official, the route would run through the AAL procedure with all of its guarantees, and the grounds for termination would be those listed in the extract from source 15 of the AAL, including that the matter is to be decided within another proceeding or that the elements of the offence have not been established. The report gives rise to neither administrative offence proceedings nor litigation, so the only forthcoming document is the further EU decision on the sanctions regime.
The insurer could refuse to compensate losses where the liability of the persons involved cannot be determined, where the victim has also suffered personal injuries, or where the total amount of compensation exceeds EUR 50,000.
The amendments will enter into force on 1 January 2027 and will apply to insurance cases occurring from that date.
If the proposals become law, victims of road traffic accidents from 1 January 2027 will, in several situations, be able to receive compensation from their own insurer rather than waiting for the at-fault party's insurer or the Motor Insurers' Bureau. The essential legal shift is the broadening of the definition of direct loss settlement: compensation could also be payable for damage resulting in the annulment of the authorisation to participate in road traffic, for certain property damage, and — where any person has suffered severe or moderately severe bodily injuries — to all persons involved in the accident. Amendments to the Law on Compulsory Insurance of Civil Liability of Owners of Land Vehicles (hereinafter — the MTPL Law) have been submitted for the third reading.
The existing MTPL Law already contains exceptions to the principle that compensation is paid by the at-fault party's insurer. Article 19 provides that losses caused by an unidentified vehicle are generally not compensated, except for personal injuries and the property damage referred to in points 4 and 5 of the first part of Article 25. Moreover, the law already incorporates the mechanism mentioned in the proposal: if at least one injured person has suffered severe or moderately severe bodily injuries in the accident, the losses referred to in Article 25 are compensated to all persons involved. Thus, part of the proposed extensions is a refinement of the existing regulation rather than a new institution. As regards the new wording on direct loss settlement, the significant element is the set of limitations designed to prevent double claims for compensation:
continuation — practical significance: the insurer to whom the victim applies will be obliged to perform the actions prescribed by law — accept and examine the application, decide on compensation and pay it within the statutory time limits, and ensure that the persons involved in the accident are informed of the application procedure. Any dispute between the insurer and the Bureau over the duty to pay will be resolved by the Bureau, which processes claims and decides on the payment or refusal of compensation.
If the draft law is adopted at the third reading, the amendments will enter into force on 1 January 2027 and will apply only to insurance cases occurring from that date — the existing regulation will continue to apply to accidents occurring before it. Practically important:
Correction. The report presents the sanctions under Section 177(3) of the Criminal Law as mandatory elements, whereas the statutory text provides for alternatives: confiscation of property is possible "or without confiscation of property", and probation supervision "or without it". It should be stated more precisely that imprisonment for two to ten years is the only mandatory part of the sanction, while confiscation and probation supervision are discretionary options for the court. The report also fails to mention that, by virtue of Section 591, the prosecution may seek a harsher decision at the new hearing, since the judgment was quashed following a prosecutor's protest.
The Supreme Court found that the appellate court had failed to evaluate the evidence in accordance with the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Law, and therefore the judgment is quashed in its entirety, including the part concerning the laundering charge and the non-application of a coercive measure.
Section 177(3) of the Criminal Law, concerning fraud committed on a large scale or by an organised group, prescribes imprisonment for two to ten years, with or without confiscation of property, and with or without probation supervision for up to three years.
For the nine defendants — including Ainārs Šlesers and Andris Šķēle — the expected legal position has once again been laid bare: the cassation instance of the Supreme Court has quashed the acquittal, and the charges of fraud, money laundering, and the conduct of officials criminalised under Section 318 of the Criminal Law must once again be decided in full by the court. The direct legal question is twofold: first, whether, upon renewed consideration at the appellate level, the elements of fraud under Section 177(3) of the Criminal Law will be established, the sanction for which is imprisonment for two to ten years, with or without confiscation of property, and with or without probation supervision for up to three years; second, how the Supreme Court's interpretation of indirect infringement of the victim's proprietary interests will alter the finding of loss with respect to SIA "Tet". The scope of the charges is approximately three million euros, which, in the prosecution's view, constitutes proceeds of crime.
The procedural deficiencies identified by the Supreme Court concern the fundamental principle of proof: evidence must be assessed in its totality and in its interrelationship, rather than resting decisively solely on the defendants' own testimony. The court also incompletely evaluated the findings of the State Audit Office's audit report on the drafting and conduct of the tender, as well as witness testimony and the opinions of state institutions regarding the deliberate amendment of the draft Cabinet Regulations after their submission to the meeting of State Secretaries. The interpretation provided by the Supreme Court with respect to Section 177(3) of the Criminal Law substantially broadens the scope of application of fraud in this case:
The renewed hearing commencing on 5 October means that all nine defendants once again face the full range of sentencing risk, including imprisonment for up to ten years and confiscation of property, should fraud committed on a large scale or by an organised group be established. Of practical significance is also the fact that the Supreme Court's interpretation of indirect deception undercuts the prosecution's principal argument — that the loss to "Tet" arose notwithstanding the payment to the intermediary and the profit generated from the project.