Latvia – As reported in the Baltic and Central European press a few days ago, the former Latvian Minister of the Interior (1994-1995), Jānis Ādamsons, was convicted of espionage by a court in Riga on Thursday 9 November 2023. The former minister, who was also a member of the Latvian parliament (Saeima) from 1995 to 2002 and from 2010 to 2022, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for spying for the Russian Federation.

Liberal-conservative, then social-democrat, then pro-Russian

This politician, who was in turn a member of the Latvian Way (Latvijas Ceļš), a liberal-conservative party, before joining the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (LSDSP) in 1996, then the People’s Harmony Party, also social-democratic but pro-Russian, in 2005. He is also one of three Latvian MPs to have been suspended in November 2021 for failing to present a certificate of vaccination or recovery against Covid-19.

Parliament candidacy rejected for former KGB membership in 2002

Mr Ādamsons’ legal troubles began in July 1998, when the Latvian Documentation Centre on the Consequences of Totalitarianism reported to the Speaker of the Latvian Parliament that Mr Ādamsons had been an „employee of the USSR State Security Committee”, in other words, the KGB. He had been a border guard officer in the days of the Soviet Union. For this reason, he would not have been legally entitled to stand in the legislative elections in Latvia. Although his mandate as a Member of Parliament was not suspended, it was felt that he should not have access to certain confidential information.

When the Central Electoral Commission refused him the right to stand again as a parliamentary candidate in 2002, Mr Ādamsons filed a complaint, which was rejected by all the Latvian authorities before the European Court of Human Rights finally judged in his favour in June 2008 and ordered the Latvian State to pay him a compensation of €10,000.

Providing information to the FSB from 2017 to 2021

Finally, regarding the present case, Mr Ādamsons was accused of spying for Russia and his parliamentary immunity was lifted on 10 June 2021, with him being arrested the following day. Specifically, he is accused of having passed information to Russia between 2017 and 2021: on the one hand publicly available documents (various amendments to laws, information on the supply and budget of the Latvian army), but also informations about the Latvian parliament’s position against Nord Stream 2, probably even using his parliamentary computer to transmit the said informations. Mr Ādamsons also received a pension of 8,400 euros a year from Russia, which he claimed was his pension as a border guard.

According to the Riga court judgment of 9 November, „Jānis Adamsons illegally, systematically and deliberately collected and, through a Russian citizen, former employee of the State Security Committee of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Gennady Silonov, transferred undisclosed information, as well as other information, to a foreign intelligence service – the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)”.