Companies linked to transit business helped fund Šlesers party's unlawful spring campaign
Latvian broadcast "Nekā personīga" reports that synchronized donations from bank employees and transit-business-linked entrepreneurs covered a €340,000 sum the party "Latvia First" was ordered to pay back after running an illegal campaign. Politician Ainārs Šlesers initially had his spring ad campaign paid by an association rather than the party, sidestepping campaign spending limits.
Before the official pre-election campaign period began this spring, posters featuring Ainārs Šlesers, a politician with the "Latvia First" (LPV) party, appeared across Riga. The campaign was funded not by the party itself but by Šlesers' own association, "Latvija pirmā" — a move meant to circumvent spending limits imposed on political parties. Latvia's Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), however, ordered the party to reimburse the €340,000 spent on the campaign from its own funds.
The program "Nekā personīga" reports that over two months the party transferred exactly the required amount to the association in more than 20 payments. During the same period, the party's income surged sharply — data show that members and supporters donated precisely the sum needed over three months.
Donations from bank and transit-linked companies
KNAB's database shows that in mid-May the party received the maximum allowed donation from both major shareholders of Rietumu Banka, as well as from two members of the bank's management. In mid-June, within one week, at least nine more bank employees transferred money to the party. The bank declined to comment on its employees' or shareholders' private payments.
Donors also include five employees of a single port company, several contributors from a radio company group, and synchronized payments from a firm once owned by the "Skonto" group but now owned by an LPV member. Other donors include a former manager of the Freeport of Riga, the head of a coal- and grain-handling company, a shopping center owner, and a longtime owner of an electronics retail chain — another of whose companies was linked several years ago to supplies for Russian missile manufacturers, an allegation the company has denied.
After the previous Saeima elections, KNAB already investigated similar coordinated payments from companies linked to Šlesers, but was unable to prove an illegal arrangement. Latvian law bars parties from accepting corporate donations, and coordinated giving of this kind could indicate an attempt to circumvent that ban. KNAB declined to give an interview to the program.
Šlesers used a similar scheme — funding a campaign through an association rather than the party — 12 years ago, concealing the source of financing at the time. It later emerged that the funding came from Rietumu Banka, businessman Mihails Uļmans, and a company linked to Russia.
