May a coercive measure — a monetary penalty of EUR 2.3 million — be applied to a legal person for the bribery of a foreign official committed by its employee, and what is the nexus between the employee's conduct and the promotion of the company's activities or interests.
Legal basis: Since the database contains no specific extract of the provisions of the Criminal Law, I rely on general principles of law, codified in Latvia in the system of Article 11.1 of the Criminal Law. This provides that legal persons are subject to criminal liability on an equal footing with natural persons, as well as to specific sanctions — coercive measures, including monetary penalties — where the person who committed the offence acted in the name of the company or within the scope of its interests, and the company derived a benefit therefrom or the conduct promoted its activities. In this case, such a basis is particularly contentious: the employee Sharkov managed the subsidiary "DPA" in Minsk and in 2015 gave a bribe worth USD 5,000 to the director of the Data Processing Centre of the Belarusian Ministry of Finance, so that the authority would conclude a contract with "DPA". The Vidzeme Regional Court, on 13 October, cited as its basis the extract of the Belarusian judgment containing the specific factual acts for which Sharkov was convicted, thereby overturning the judgment of the Riga City Court of 15 November 2022, which had acquitted the company.
What case law says: Case law on the liability of legal persons in foreign bribery cases in Latvia is minimal and incomparable — "de facto" indicates that only five such cases have been investigated since 2014, of which only two have resulted in final judgments. This case expands the practice, as it overturns the acquittal at first instance and imposes a coercive measure not on the bribing employee alone, but at the level of the corporate structure, also covering the related "Squalio group". The judgment is not yet final — the company's counsel, Mārtiņš Knipšis, declined to comment, and the company's written response indicates an intention to appeal on cassation. [TIKSLINAMAS]:
Practical significance: The practical significance exceeds the specific amount: the monetary penalty of EUR 2.3 million is many times greater than the value of the bribe (USD 5,000) and even exceeds the company's 2023/2024 turnover (EUR 2.6 million with losses of EUR 4 million), which indicates that the court assessed not the bribe itself, but the benefits of the contract as a whole — a point every IT company with foreign subsidiaries involved in public procurement must take into account. Beyond the fine, in the event of a final judgment the company's participation in public procurement could be restricted, and the Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB) has already indicated that it conducts risk assessments and provides procurement commissions with recommendations or warnings regarding companies in strategically significant sectors — meaning that reputational and market-access consequences arise before a final judgment. The company will also have to reckon with the structural effect: the transfer of ownership to a US citizen through Austrian, Cayman Islands and US structures does not preclude liability, since the basis is the fact of the conduct, not the owner's jurisdiction. The future monitoring point is the cassation application to the Supreme Court, and whether the cassation instance will assess the limits of proportionality and the evaluation of evidence regarding the use of extracts of foreign judgments in Latvian criminal proceedings.
Correction. In the article, the prosecution's claim regarding a "criminal organisation formed by at least five persons" is presented without reference to the specific statutory provision — it would be more accurate to state that the qualification is based on Section 89.1 of the Criminal Law, which establishes liability for the creation of an organisation with the intent to commit especially serious crimes, and that this provision applies to especially serious crimes against the state, not to the activity of any group. Likewise, the article does not mention that the criminal proceedings were initiated against the facts rather than against specific officials, which materially changes their procedural character — this is not an indictment against identified individuals but an investigation into a set of events. It should also be clarified that the basis for jurisdiction over actions carried out on foreign territory is Section 4 of the Criminal Law, which the article does not explain.
For unlawful transfer of a person across the state border committed by an organised group, Section 285(3) of the Criminal Law provides for imprisonment of two to eight years with or without confiscation of property.
Foreigners who have committed especially serious crimes against Latvian interests on the territory of another state are to be held liable in Latvia under Section 4(3) of the Criminal Law if they have not been prosecuted in the local state.
Belarusian officials who organise illegal migration and coerce migrants into damaging Latvian infrastructure face criminal liability in Latvia also for acts committed outside Latvian territory, with penalties that may reach life imprisonment. The novelty of the news is that the prosecution has uncovered elements of torture and coerced infrastructure damage, which broadens the possible qualification of the criminal offences. The criminal proceedings opened in July at the Prosecutor General's Office assess the acts not as separate border violations but as a potential especially serious crime against the state committed by a criminal organisation. The direct legal question is twofold: first, under which provision the acts of Belarusian officials should be qualified — Section 285 of the Criminal Law (unlawful transfer of persons across the state border) or more serious crimes against the state and humanity; second, on what basis Latvia can at all hold foreign officials accountable for acts committed on the territory of Belarus. The basis for jurisdiction is provided by Section 4(3) of the Criminal Law: foreigners without a permanent residence permit who have committed serious or especially serious crimes against the interests of the Republic of Latvia or its inhabitants on the territory of another state are to be held liable under Latvian law if they have not been prosecuted or surrendered for trial in the local state.
For unlawful transfer of a person across the state border, Section 285(1) of the Criminal Law provides for imprisonment of up to three years, while subsection 2 — where the acts are committed by a state official using his or her official position, or by a group of persons pursuant to a prior agreement — provides for imprisonment of up to six years with or without confiscation of property. Subsection 3 (organised group or serious consequences, or the transfer of more than five persons in a single instance) provides for imprisonment of two to eight years. The "criminal organisation comprising at least five persons" mentioned in the news corresponds to the hallmark of an organised group, so the qualification moves toward Section 285(3). The elements of torture and infliction of bodily injuries open the possibility of qualifying the acts also as war crimes or crimes against humanity. Section 74 of the Criminal Law on torture or inhuman treatment of persons protected by international humanitarian law provides for life imprisonment or imprisonment of three to twenty years; Section 71² on crimes against humanity — acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population, manifested as torture, unlawful deprivation of liberty or forced displacement — provides for the same penalty range. Whether these elements of the offence apply will depend on the conflict context and proof of systematicity, but the "systematic undermining of the operations of Latvian border guards" cited by the prosecution is precisely the kind of hallmark that may activate these offences. The decision of the Criminal Cases Department in case No. SKK-67/2025 clarifies the distinction between Section 285 and Section 285¹ (providing the opportunity to reside unlawfully in Latvia); investigators will have to prove precisely the organisation of the transfer, not merely the facilitation of residence. Payments in cryptocurrency in the amount of approximately USD 5,000 are evidence of the commercially organised character, which reinforces the qualification. For migrants coerced into damaging infrastructure, the situation is different: the coercive character affects the form of guilt and the possibility of imposing a sentence below the minimum threshold under the rules on mitigation of punishment in Section 53 of the Criminal Law. In the asylum procedure, such migrants may also face exclusion grounds under Section 42 of the Asylum Law if the person has committed an especially serious crime or poses a threat to national security, but the coercive character will be assessed individually.
The practical consequences unfold on several levels:
National sports facility status is granted by an order of the Cabinet of Ministers, and the ministry includes it in the register within five working days of the order's entry into force.
If the state and municipality were to contribute only land, while a private investor would build the facility, the relations must be governed in accordance with the Public-Private Partnership Law, which requires the contract to specify the resources to be transferred by the public partner and the fate of the newly created property.
The National Football Stadium project has reached a state in which no previous site selection has been legally secured, and decision-making has once again returned to the cycle of state administration and Cabinet of Ministers decisions. The essence of the news: the Skonto Stadium has been sold to the Estonian company Invego, so the procurement scenario has fallen away, and the government is awaiting the BDO study, on the basis of which an informative report to the Cabinet of Ministers will be prepared. The legal position depends on the legal form in which the project will be implemented — as a state or municipal sports facility, as a public-private partnership, or as a private project with a public land contribution. This choice is not technical: each form entails a different regulatory regime, competence, and financing procedure. The direct legal question is twofold. First, under what procedure would the new arena acquire the status of a national sports facility — this is governed by Section 6 of the Law "On the Status of a National Sports Facility" and Cabinet of Ministers regulations, under which the owner of the sports facility submits an application to the Ministry of Education and Science with confirmation from the international federation of the facility's suitability for international competitions, an annual event plan, and the consent of the mortgagee if the facility is mortgaged. Second, if the state and municipality were to contribute only land, while a private investor would build and operate the facility, the relations must be governed in accordance with the Public-Private Partnership Law, which requires the contract to specify the resources to be transferred by the public partner, the ownership rights to newly created property, the term of the contract, and the procedure for the transfer of ownership in the event of early termination or expiry of the term.
The Sports Law grants the municipality a right, not a duty, to build and maintain municipal sports facilities (Section 10 of the Law, i.e., point 1 of Part 4 of the section regulating municipal involvement in sport), so the Riga City Council's offer to contribute land rather than budget funds is compatible with the law, but it does not automatically transform the project into a public stadium. State involvement in sports infrastructure also takes place through the State Sports Fund, whose tasks include the development, renewal, and modernisation of sports infrastructure (Sections 1 and 2 of the Law on the State Sports Fund; Section 20 of the Sports Law), and the Fund is a derivative public-law entity under the supervision of the Minister for Education and Science. Consequently, the range of forms of state participation is broader than merely a budget subsidy: a federation or project implementer may also apply for the Fund's resources if it complies with the principles laid down in the statute and the law — quality, usefulness, efficiency, transparency, and a results-based approach. If the stadium were built as a public-private partnership project, the Public-Private Partnership Law would require the concession or PPP contract to reflect: the proposed design and construction costs, annual operating costs, the amount of financial support from the public partner or other state or municipal institutions, as well as the justification of the financing. In practical terms, this means that the model proposed by Bergholtz — "the state and municipality contribute the land, the investor the rest" — is not without formalities: the transfer of land constitutes a transfer of resources by the public partner, and it must be formalised in the contract with precise regulation of the fate of the newly created property. The fact mentioned in the news that, in the previous assessment, none of the project variants was commercially self-sustaining and a state subsidy was required in all cases directly affects this contract structure — the amount of financial support from the public partner would have to be declared already at the offer stage. On the question of status, the decisive factor is the procedure under the Cabinet of Ministers regulations on the granting of national sports facility status: the status is granted by an order of the Cabinet of Ministers, and the ministry includes it in the register within five working days of the order's entry into force (Cabinet of Ministers Regulations No. 76 of 26 January 2010, point 8). Within one month of the facility being put into operation, the owner of the sports facility must submit information for the register to the ministry, and the register records the form of ownership, the owner, and the note on national sports facility status. Since, in the case of Skonto, the owner is changing to Invego, the sports facility register data on the owner and status would need to be updated independently of the national arena question. The sources contain no case law on comparable stadium site selection or PPP projects, so no specific precedent can be cited.
The near-term developments unfold at three levels:
Article 23.1(3)(3) of the National Security Law gives the Centre the right, after taking over crisis management, to issue binding tasks to ministries, state institutions, and municipalities, and to monitor their implementation.
The taking over of crisis management occurs only "in accordance with a decision of the Cabinet of Ministers" (Article 23.1(2)(2)), so the Centre's weakness manifests itself in the planning and consultation phase.
The situation revealed in the broadcast shows that the central coordinator of Latvia's crisis management system — the Crisis Management Centre — one year after its establishment is unable to fulfil the duties imposed on it by law, which affects both municipalities and residents in the event of a future threat. The legal problem is the mismatch between the duties set out in Article 23.1 of the National Security Law and the Centre's actual resourcing — the lack of a secure communications network, premises, and funding. Article 23.1(1) of that Law provides, inter alia, that the Centre shall coordinate the implementation of decisions of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers in the field of crisis management, coordinate sectoral continuity and resilience plans, direct the management of a threat affecting several sectors or the entire state, and cooperation between ministries, municipalities, and persons (points 7 and 8). In addition, Article 23.3(1) obliges municipalities to carry out the measures specified in Cabinet decisions and to cooperate with the Centre, so the Centre's inability to provide coordination directly reduces support for municipalities — as the storm experience, with 277,000 households left without electricity, practically confirmed.
The legislator has given the Centre not only duties but also powers that would allow the situation to be changed without new legislation. Article 23.1(3)(1) of the National Security Law gives the Centre the right to request and receive from ministries, state institutions, and municipalities the information necessary for crisis management, and point 3 gives it the right, after taking over crisis management, to issue binding tasks and monitor their implementation. However, the taking over of crisis management occurs only "in accordance with a decision of the Cabinet of Ministers" (Article 23.1(2)(2)), so in the current situation the Centre's weakness manifests itself precisely in the planning and consultation phase, rather than in operational crisis management. From the parties' perspective:
The Prime Minister's observation that the Centre was "created on paper" legally raises the question of ensuring the fulfilment of the duties under Article 23.1, which the Law leaves to the government's competence — under Article 23.1(4), the Cabinet of Ministers determines the procedure by which the Centre engages human resources in a crisis and compensates the resulting expenses. The nine million euros allocated for building state material reserves come from the budgetary process, not from a sanction mechanism in the Law, so the answer here lies in organisational and financial measures rather than in legal enforcement instruments.
Realistically, two scenarios are possible. The first — the Centre continues to operate within the State Chancellery with incomplete technical provision; in that case, the next crisis affecting several sectors will most likely again be managed at the level of municipalities and individual ministries, and the formal route would be a proposal under Article 23.3(1)(6) for the Cabinet to take over crisis management. The second — the government changes the Centre's placement within the administrative structure and allocates funding for a secure communications system, which would enable the Centre to fully perform the duties under Article 23.1(1) and to prepare proposals on the declaration of a state of emergency or state of exception. In practical terms, this matters to municipal leaders planning their civil protection measures, and to ministries whose sectoral plans must undergo the Centre's assessment as a mandatory stage.
What is the legal hierarchy governing seasonal time changes in Latvia, and what happens if no unified decision on abolishing the time change is adopted at EU level.
Legal basis: There is no dispute or novel rule here — the analysis rests on the general principle of law governing the relationship between EU law and national regulation. The news item itself identifies the legal basis: the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 January 2001 establishes the start and end of summer time uniformly across all Member States, and in Latvia it is implemented by the Cabinet Regulations of 26 October 2010 "On the Transition to Summer Time". As an act of EU law, the Directive imposes on Member States the obligation to ensure corresponding national regulation; the Cabinet Regulations are therefore a secondary implementing act that may not deviate from the dates laid down in the Directive. As long as no new decision on abolishing the seasonal time change has been adopted at EU level, Member States have no legal basis unilaterally to discontinue the time change, and Latvian regulation continues to apply the existing arrangement.
Practical significance: The practical takeaway concerns regulatory stability and the basis for planning: in the absence of both amendments to the Directive and a unified EU decision, any abolition of the time change at national level would conflict with EU law and would create incompatibility with neighbouring countries' time zones. For a practising lawyer, this means that contracts, deadlines and procedural documents must continue to rely on the existing time-change arrangement rather than on political discussions, which change nothing as a matter of law. The explanation by the Ministry of Economics cited in the news item — on the need to carry out a full impact assessment — indicates that the issue remains at the stage of political deliberation without any legal outcome. Monitoring point: the next transition to summer time is set for 28 March 2027 at 3:00, and any changes will be possible only following amendments to the Directive and their reflection in new Cabinet Regulations.