Prosecutor not to look into Riigikogu Chancellery and Alajõe's conduct
The Office of the Prosecutor General has decided not to look into the actions of Maria Alajõe. The former secretary general of the Riigikogu issued a directive that effectively created conditions in which evidence demanded by Harju County Court could be destroyed.
Harju County Court demanded to see part of the email correspondence of former Reform Party MP Rain Rosimannus as well as MP and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Keit Pentus-Rosimannus in connection with the Autorollo bankruptcy case (ERR News reported).
The Chancellery of the Riigikogu refused and submitted an objection. While the court was still deliberating the matter, Alajõe went on to issue a directive limiting the required time period for which e-mails need to remain on the Riigikogu's servers to a year, effectively creating the conditions for said emails to be deleted.
After business paper Äripäev made the matter public, deputy chairman of the Estonian Conservative People's Party (EKRE), Jaak Madison, filed a complaint with the Office of the Prosecutor General, which decided not to look into the matter any further.
The information in the criminal complaint submitted by Madison did not lead to any crime committed, the office said. "The destruction of evidence is treated as a crime if evidence used in a criminal case is involved. In this case the court demanded to see correspondence connected to a civil proceeding," the office's PR advisor, Kaarel Kallas, told ERR's online news on Thursday.
Madison's complaint also mentioned influence peddling. The Office of the Prosecutor General doesn't have any information that suggests that Alajõe was under someone's influence when she signed the directive, Kallas said.
He added that a criminal investigation can only be opened if there are indications that a crime was committed. As the office hasn't found any such indications, no investigation is to follow, Kallas said.
The complainant now has ten days to contest the prosecutor's decision.
Alajõe herself has said that neither she nor the Chancellery of the Riigikogu ever "planned to take sides in the Autorollo case." She doesn't know whether or not the e-mails concerned are still on the servers, but could say that "nobody planned to delete anything" before the end of the court case.
According to Alajõe, planning of the measures introduced by the directive in question started already in 2015.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
