Court extends former Cēsu alus chief's driving ban to five years over drunk driving case

The Riga Regional Court has revised a lower court's ruling in the criminal case against Eva Sietiņsone, former chairwoman of the board of brewery Cēsu alus, who was convicted of driving while heavily intoxicated. The appellate panel decided that the mandatory additional penalty — deprivation of driving rights — must be set at five years rather than three, as required by the Criminal Law, which does not allow judges discretion to shorten this term. The rest of the lower court's ruling remains unchanged, and the decision is now final and cannot be appealed.

How the case reached the regional court

Earlier, the Riga City Court had sentenced Sietiņsone to a year and a half of probation supervision, a three-year driving ban, and partial recovery of the value of her Lexus RX 450h car in favor of the state, amounting to 20,000 euros. A prosecutor filed an appeal protest against that ruling, arguing that the three-year restriction did not comply with the law and that a larger sum — 35,000 euros — should have been recovered from the car, whose total value was assessed at 42,495 euros. The prosecutor did not object to the base sentence. The regional court agreed with the prosecutor's argument on the length of the additional penalty but left the recovery amount unchanged.

Circumstances of the case

Sietiņsone was stopped in December 2023 while driving a Lexus along Krasta iela in Riga, heading toward the Dole shopping center. A test found her blood alcohol concentration at 2.66 per mille. The court also ordered her to pay 204 euros in procedural costs related to the alcohol test.

Since November 2022, Latvia's Criminal Law has established criminal liability for driving with an alcohol concentration above 1.5 per mille, including vehicle confiscation in cases of severe intoxication or refusal to undergo testing. Such an offense carries a penalty of up to one year of imprisonment, probation supervision, and a five-year driving ban.

Sietiņsone previously did not deny her connection to the criminal case but declined to comment on it, and denied that her departure from the top position at Cēsu alus was linked to the incident. She had held the chairwoman role since 2004, having served as deputy chair of the board since 2002.