The Estonian Supreme Court on Friday rejected a complaint Mayor of Tallinn Edgar Savisaar and businessman Alexander Kofkin had filed against a regional prosecutor's office over the steps taken in connection with a probe into Savisaar's financial affairs.
The administrative law chamber of the top court agreed with lower level courts that complaints over pre-trial proceedings of the prosecution have to be solved either at the Public Prosecutor's Office or county court and resolving the demands made by the complainants is not in the jurisdiction of the administrative court, spokespeople for the Supreme Court said.
Savisaar, leader of the opposition Center Party, and Kofkin, a businessman born in Estonia and based in Switzerland, filed the complaint after learning that the North Regional Prosecutor's Office at the begining of 2011 sent to a Swiss law enforcement agency an application for legal assistance to get information about persons and companies connected with Savisaar and a loan issued to him.
In their complaint, which they first filed with the Tallinn Administrative Court on Oct. 18 last year, Savisaar and Kofkin seek that the processing of personal data be stopped, untrue statements of fact retracted and unlawfulness of the publication of value judgements be formally established.
In the top court's view the administrative court is not in a position to evaluate the circumstances for the investigation of which a criminal inquiry has been launched. Only the Public Prosecutor's Office or county court can judge whether the prosecution had sufficient grounds to open a criminal proceeding and seek legal assistance.
The Tallinn Administrative Court did not accept the complaint and at the end of last year the second tier court rejected also the plaintiffs' appeal against its ruling. Savisaar and Kofkin then turned to the Supreme Court which accepted the complaint last month.
The Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation on the basis of the Penal Code article on money laundering on Feb. 3, 2011 and on Feb. 9 the same year a legal assistance application was filed with a Swiss legal authority.
Savisaar informed the public about the criminal proceeding himself last summer when he criticized the correspondence of the prosecutors with the Swiss legal authority in his party's propaganda weekly Kesknadal, described the statements pertaining to him in the letter as not true and said that the prosecutor's office was unable to describe the act which he had allegedly committed. According to the Kesknadal report, Savisaar heard about the criminal proceeding from Switzerland.
Savisaar said back in 2010 that in October 2009 he took a loan from a company owned by the sons of Ain Seppik, then member of the Center Party, and repaid it in December. The party leader said that to pay the debt, he took a loan from a Liechtenstein businessman and lawyer, Peter Kaiser. He said that the loan was taken with annual interest of 8 percent for eight years.
The declaration of economic interest Savisaar filed last spring shows that he still has the 173,551 euro debt. Besides, the mayor of the capital city and leader of the largest opposition party has another debt of 33,848 euros taken from a private person. Kofkin said in September 2012 that it was he who provided the loan to Savisaar and that he also supported a foreign legal entity connected with both of them and a few other persons that operated in the printing and publishing business.
Savisaar himself has referred to a link between the fund established in Switzerland and the criminal action taken by the prosecutors. He said that the fund was set up in 1997 to support Centrist world view and publish related literature and has by now wound up its business.