Internal Security Bureau seeks charges against three Zemgale police officers and a private individual over concealed road accident
Latvia's Internal Security Bureau has finished investigating three criminal cases involving Zemgale regional State Police officers and a private individual. The cases have been sent to prosecutors to launch criminal proceedings.
The Internal Security Bureau (IDB), the body that investigates misconduct by public officials in Latvia, is seeking to prosecute three officers of the State Police Zemgale regional department and one private individual. The cases concern covering up the circumstances of a road accident involving another police officer. The bureau informed the news agency LETA.
How the investigation began
In the second half of January 2026, the IDB detained several Zemgale regional officers on suspicion of inaction and official forgery, committed as a group by prior agreement. To speed up and streamline the investigation, separate criminal proceedings were split off from the original case. The bureau has now completed three of them and sent them to the investigative prosecutor's office of the State Institutions Criminal Offences Service.
The three cases sent on
In mid-August, prosecutors received a case against one officer for inaction and official forgery. Investigators gathered evidence that he deliberately failed to test for alcohol concentration and did not take statements from witnesses, seeking to give unjustified advantages to a colleague who was possibly driving under the influence and caused the accident. He also wrote in an official document that another, unidentified person who had left the scene was responsible for the violation.
In the second half of August, a case was sent against one officer for disclosing confidential information and against another for inciting that disclosure. According to the IDB, the officer who caused the accident persuaded a colleague handling the related administrative violation case to reveal information from the case file.
In early October, a third case went to prosecutors against a private individual for knowingly giving false testimony. Aware of the circumstances of the accident, this person gave knowingly false statements in both the administrative violation case and the criminal proceedings.
The IDB says the offence was uncovered in close cooperation with the State Police.
