PM Kulbergs demands review of €147,000 grant to Latvia's Bridge Federation

Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has demanded that the Ministry of Education and Science (IZM) immediately submit all documentation regarding the distribution of €225,000 in state funding among seven international sports events. He is seeking a legally grounded explanation for why the Latvian Bridge Federation received €147,366.52 — 65.5% of the entire competition fund, more than all six other supported events combined.

The timeline raises particular concern: the funding competition was announced on July 22, but the bridge championships that received the money had already concluded on July 15, a week earlier.

PM denies personally approving the sum

Kulbergs explained that on June 16 the government only decided to allocate €225,000 to an open competition, in which all sports federations were meant to have equal opportunities and funding was to be awarded according to clear, pre-announced, verifiable criteria. He stressed that neither the Cabinet as a whole nor he personally separately approved the specific €147,000 sum for the bridge federation.

Questions over the competition's purpose

According to Kulbergs, the government's decision was intended to help Latvia attract future international championships, not to retroactively cover costs for events that had already taken place. He noted that awarding funding after an event has ended and before a competition is even announced raises legitimate questions about fair competition and equal treatment of other applicants.

Further uncertainty stems from an additional planned €14,000 earmarked for evaluating the competition results and developing new, transparent criteria — which leads Kulbergs to ask what criteria were actually used to distribute the original €225,000. He is requesting that IZM provide the calculation behind the sum, the funding source, procurement documents, and an explanation of which official decided, and on what legal basis, to fund an event that had already concluded.

Kulbergs emphasized that he does not want to declare the allocation unlawful before all documents have been reviewed, but said the currently available information raises concerns serious enough to warrant an immediate inquiry.