Savisaar Sues Prosecution in Loan Case
Tallinn Mayor Edgar Savisaar and entrepreneur Aleksander Kofkin have taken the Northern District Prosecutor's Office to court over its criminal investigation into a loan taken out by Savisaar.
The pair lodged their complaint at the Tallinn Administrative Court in October in an effort to "suspend the processing of personal data, to refute incorrect facts and to establish illegal disclosure" of information in the ongoing investigation into the Savisaar loan, reported Postimees.
The court rejected that petition, said Anneli Vilu, a spokesperson for the court. In November, Savisaar and Kofkin appealed to the Tallinn District Court.
News of the court action surfaced in the press only on December 18.
Though the Prosecutor's Office has released few details of the loan case itself, media reports indicate that it involves the section of the penal code dealing with money laundering. The office is looking into a 173,000-euro loan that Savisaar acquired from a Panama-registered company in 2009. It has requested and obtained documents from Switzerland concerning the case.
“At this juncture no one has been formally accused,” a spokesman for the Prosecutor's Office said last week.
Savisaar himself broke the news that an investigation into his financial affairs was under way in an interview he gave to Kesknädal, the Center Party's official newspaper, in July. He also said that he had contacted international human rights organizations stating that the case was an "unprovoked attack" on him by the government and law enforcement agencies.
Savisaar said in the interview that the case had to do with a fund started in 1997 in Switzerland to finance publishing of literature on the centrist worldview. Postimees reported that the fund has been dissolved.
The reason for Kofkin's participation in the recent court case against the Prosecutor's Office is as yet unclear. Tallinn's official newspaper, Pealinn, wrote tht the prosecutors claimed that Kofkin may have given Savisaar money illegally in exchange for winning a tender for setting up a chain of sausage kiosks and for rights to build a hotel. The newspaper noted that Savisaar had taken out a personal loan of around 34,000 euros from Kofkin.
In an interview given to Pealinn, Kofkin said he would use all legal means to protect his reputation.