Estonian Reform Party chair: Ojuland paid party dues for people whose identity she stole

Photo: Peeter Langovits / Postimees

Chairman of Estonia's Reform Party, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip says MEP Kristiina Ojuland who heads the party's West-Viru regional organization paid party membership dues of the people whose identity she stole to vote in internal leadership elections.

Ansip told reporters after a meeting of the party's parliamentary group that Ojuland had made payments from her own bank account to pay membership dues of 39 people whose identities are suspected to have been misused in internal elections, the daily Postimees reported on Monday.

"Firstly, this certainly indicates to me that this whole case of using other persons' identities in the internal election cannot have come as such a big surprise to Kristiina Ojuland as she is currently saying," Ansip said.

He added that paying other people's membership dues is not a crime in itself but if it is followed by misuse of those people's identity it is not acceptable. "There are too many connections here to think that all this somehow just happened," he said.

As to further steps, Ansip said first the findings of the investigation group set up by the party have to be awaited, then the position of the party's court of honor, and only thereafter can the board of the party take its own decisions, Postimees said.

Ojuland has called a press conference for 3:30 Monday at the press center of BNS to give explanations about the vote manipulating suspicions raised against her.

The weekly Eesti Ekspress reported on Thursday it had information which suggests that online votes were cast in the party board elections in the name of elderly members of the party who actually did not participate in the vote. According to the paper fraud was committed in both the 2011 and 2013 leadership election. Six senior citizens from the West-Viru region told the paper that they had not participated in the election although records show they had cast e-votes. The paper believes this may be just the tip of the iceberg as it took only the West-Viru region under scrutiny.

Eesti Ekspress suspects that fictitious e-mail addresses were created in the name of the pensioners who had joined the party to obtain from the party headquarters passwords and user names which then were used to log in to the party's internal network and cast e-ballots to affect the outcome of the elections.

It is the Reform Party's practice to restrict access to personal data of members of regional organizations to the regional leader and development director, in this case MEP Kristiina Ojuland and Taimi Samblik. Ojuland on Friday denied involvement in the voting fraud.

The Reform Party has formed an investigative group to look into the allegations which consists of MPs Vaino Linde and Peep Aru, head of the party's regional organizations division Reimo Nebokat, IT chief Mati Leet and secretary general Martin Kukk.