On Wednesday, 4 September, Janis Bordans, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, signed the amendments to the Agreement between the government of the Republic of Latvia and United States of America regarding cooperation in the area of law enforcement.
Amendments to the intergovernmental agreement provides more closer cooperation between Latvia and the USA, in order to facilitate the abilities of law enforcement authorities of Latvia to prevent and combat financial and economic crimes, including corruptive and money laundering schemes.
There are trainings of judges and specialists of the investigation authorities, prosecutor's offices and other authorities, as well as workshops and legal analyses planned within the framework of the agreement, in order to determine the possibilities of making the criminal proceeding more efficient and strengthening lawfulness. Capacity increase of law enforcement authorities will enable to reduce also the time of pretrial investigation and trial in cases of complicated economic and financial crimes.
During the ceremony for signing of the agreement J.Bordans emphasized that the support from the part of the USA is important for more efficient combating of economic crimes already commenced in the legal industry, which will facilitate the fight of the Latvian authorities against money laundering and terrorism financing. One of them is the establishment of a special Court of Economic Cases with a purpose to ensure fast and high quality trial in cases of complicated economic and financial crimes. In turn, in order to ensure high quality and valuable investigation of economic and finance crimes, the efficiency of the pretrial proceeding and quality of the investigation and prosecutor’s office’s work has a significant role, as mentioned J.Bordans. Also the representative of the part of the USA emphasized the need to ensure safe and legal environment, friendly for attraction of investments.
From the part of the United States of America amendments to the intergovernmental agreement were signed by (Paul Poletes, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of the USA in Latvia. The amendments to the agreement need to be ratified by the Saeima with a law.