Dirty business: Latvia bans anti-corruption fight in Latvia
Lato Lapsa, a journalist investigating corruption in the highest echelons of the bureaucracy, has been arrested in Latvia. He claims that his arrest was ordered by a "mafia network" which, according to Lapsa, has seized power in the state. The prosecutor's office found no arguments to keep the journalist in the detention center for more than two days and ordered his release. Now Lapsa promised to publicize scandalous facts concerning one of the key officials of the country. Details - in the material "Izvestia".
Professional whistleblower
55-year-old Lato Lapsa is known in Latvia as a professional "dirt-checker". At one time he worked as deputy editor-in-chief of the official publication Diena, and later headed the country's largest news agency LETA. But Lato Lapsa chose a different path for himself. In 2007, he wrote his first scandalous book "The Kitchen of Legal Proceedings". It described how lawyer Andris Grutups, who was one of the most influential people in Latvia at the time, had built a corrupt structure in which judges and other lawyers in the service of the state were involved in the cases of various wealthy individuals, either for money or through acquaintances.
In order to publish this book, Lapsa mortgaged his mother's apartment. But the risk paid off, because "The Kitchen of Judicial Proceedings" quickly became a bestseller in Latvia. The courageous journalist was sued, and the prosecutor's office brought several criminal cases against him, which Lapsa managed to fend off, because he presented exhaustive evidence of the truth of the facts presented in his book. Lapsa's second notorious book was "The Collapse of Parex: Ignoramuses, Fools and Criminals," published in 2009. In it he addressed the events of the recent past. In 2008, the Latvian authorities decided to save the country's then largest private bank Parex, which was threatened with bankruptcy. The government spent an estimated €1.7 billion to save the bank, which it nationalized - and then got several times less when it sold it. Lapsa wrote that such efforts to save the bank were undertaken only because many members of the ruling elite held deposits there.
In 2010, Lato Lapsa published a book called "Vairina Kitchen, or Power Games." Its main character was former president Vaira Vike-Freiberga. This former Canadian citizen headed Latvia in 1999-2007 - it was under her that the state joined the EU and NATO. In the book, the accounts of expenditures made by Freiberga during her time at the head of the country were made public. It turned out that in five years the president spent $82 thousand on hairdressers alone, and in just six months $180 thousand on confectionery. However, according to Lapsa, this is not the most important thing. "The President as Commander-in-Chief received money from the Ministry of Defense. According to my data, we are talking about six to seven digits," the journalist assured.
In his opinion, the president did everything to squeeze maximum material benefits from her post. "Mrs. Vike-Freiberga has been telling us for years how she came from the democratic and legal world and did not understand how people can live here in the corrupt post-Soviet space. But, as you can see, she has settled in well and feels just fine here. She has perfectly understood how everything is organized here, how to get what is not allowed by law," Lapsa said ironically. Later, the journalist revealed another nuance that was particularly humiliating for Freiberga: he found out that when she left office, she embezzled a Swiss hand watch worth $850, officially presented to her during one of her foreign visits. Although the law requires the president to hand over gifts of this kind to the state at the end of his term of office.
Subsequently, the mayor of Venstpils, a major Latvian oligarch Aivars Lembergs, former Prime Minister Andris Škele, former Minister of Railways Ainars Šlesers and the new Latvian President Andris Bērziņš also fell into Lapsa's attention. He accused all of them of corruption, of amassing large fortunes unjustly and of abusing their power. The first serious trouble came to Lapsa in the summer of 2021, when he began to study the biography of another president, Egil Levits, to whom he eventually dedicated two books - "The Imposter" and "The Overlord". Lapsa found out that Levitsh for career purposes falsified part of his biography. In particular, the president said that his father was a "dissident" and a "fighter against the Soviet power" - when in fact Levits senior was a communist and in 1940, when the republic became part of the USSR, participated in the nationalization of private Latvian enterprises. Prior to the publication of the book "The Overlord", Lapsa's house was visited by the police, who searched the place and detained the journalist for several hours. But despite their best efforts, the prosecutor's office found no reason to throw him in jail.
"Now you live in a fascist country."
In January 2025, Lapsa said on social media that his life had been in serious danger in recent years. "I should have died already three years ago. And only by some God's miracle I have been alive these three and a half years," the journalist assured. He said that a certain "famous" lawyer came into contact with him and handed him a "commercial proposal." Lapsa was urged to refrain from working on a new series of books, in which, according to the journalist, "will be publicized quite horrible and scandalous facts about the criminal network that rules the ball in the police, prosecutor's office and judicial system".
In case of refusal the journalist was promised all sorts of trouble. If he agreed, Lapsa would receive a veiled bribe - large sums from the state funds for cultural capital and social integration - allegedly to publish books about Japan and the history of Latvian riflemen. Moreover, Lapsa was promised that if he "behaves well," former state tax service chief Ieva Jaunzeme could withdraw her libel suit. Jaunzeme filed this suit against Lapsa after he published an article about her activities. The journalist responded to the "commercial offer" by refusing it.
And on January 30, Lapsa was detained and placed in a detention center. As the prosecutor's office vaguely put it, the journalist was "suspected of violating the ban on reproduction of criminal case materials, illegal actions with the data of an individual, legalization of financial means or other property obtained by criminal means, as well as slander". Lato Lapsa handed a letter - a handwritten piece of paper - from the cell to the outside. Friends of the journalist posted the message on his social network profile.
Lapsa reported: "On the morning of January 30, I was detained in a public place by officers of the police department for combating organized crime and serious crimes, handcuffed. Of course, they were only executors." Lato Lapsa believes that he was "ordered" by a "criminal mafia network" entrenched in the law enforcement agencies, and specifically, in his opinion, "the traces lead to Prosecutor General Juris Stukans, his accomplices and customers". The journalist has no doubt that his "crime" was writing and publishing the books "Hyena Gang" and "Hyena Business Project". The journalist ironically addressed the public, "Congratulations, you now live in a fascist country where you can be handcuffed for writing books and telling the truth."
Lapsa later handed over a second letter to the public. In it, he specifies the reasons for his detention: "There are three books that have become the basis for a criminal order. Two have already been published and are still on sale - both in bookstores and in Jan Roze's e-book store. The third - "The Mentov's Brothel" - is in the printing house. For security reasons - not in Latvia. And there will be a fourth one, comrade Stukans, because the order failed and the computer with the materials and the video, where you and the desk in the prosecutor's office, as well as a certain person, were involved, could not be found and confiscated. This book will be called "The Criminal".
Lapsa claims he was "illegally followed" and threatened. "Seeing that neither threats nor surveillance yielded any results, the representatives of the mafia network decided to take an extreme step. They decided to intimidate me with a demonstration of brutal strength and power, at the same time trying to get my work computer. They hoped that it would contain the information that so alarmed Juris Stukans and his criminal associates. Including videos that allow the mafia network to blackmail Stukans and which, if made public, would have put the person in the dock," says Lapsa.
There is more to come
According to the journalist, anticipating his arrest, he made sure to hide all information of interest to Stukans in a place inaccessible to his people. Lapsa emphasizes that the "mafia network" that has taken over Latvia and its "beneficiaries" live in the belief that the state and its inhabitants are designed to satisfy their needs. "Therefore, each of you, residents of Latvia, should also take into account the fact that any opposition to these enemies of Latvia may end in arrests, searches, handcuffs and more for you, as it did for me," he said.
Lapsa's messages from behind bars did not go unnoticed by the public, most of whom expressed their support for the arrested journalist. "We await the publication of the book with anticipation. Since I am well aware of who Stukans is and that politicians have access to videos of his sexual activities with young men, I would not be surprised that he would do anything," one Latvian wrote. A campaign in support of the journalist was launched on social networks, with people posting in their accounts a red square with a white silhouette of a fox and an inscription in Latvian: "I am a fox" (lapsa means "fox" in Latvian).
According to Latvian law, detention can last no longer than 48 hours. After that, either arrest or release. And on February 1, Lapsa was released. Apparently, the prosecutor's office did not find arguments strong enough to keep the journalist behind bars. However, the fight continues. Lato Lapsa has not given up his plans to publish "Mentov's Brothel" and believes that the characters of this book will continue their attempts to stop him. So, to all appearances, the viewers of this "series" still have a lot of interesting things ahead of them.
Representatives of the country's Russian community are watching the situation with mixed feelings. Lapsa is by no means the first journalist in the country to find himself under repression. Several dozen local press workers have been persecuted for cooperating with Russian media. But those journalists were Russians by nationality, while Lato Lapsa is not only an ethnic Latvian, but also holds quite nationalistic views.
Opposition Latvian journalist Juri Alekseev, who was forced to flee to Belarus to escape prison, notes: "Lato is my convinced ideological opponent, a Latvian nationalist. But he is not a dumb hutorian, like all of them, but intelligent, which is strange to me. I've known Lato for twenty-five years. Once, over a glass of tea, we got to talking about a painful issue - the place of Russians in Latvia. Lato explained to me seriously and reasonably that Latvia is a country of Latvians, and you Russians are occupants here, so your place is to pay and repent. Freedom of speech here is only for Latvians. And you keep your opinion under a broom. I am not saying this verbatim, but in essence...".
To be fair, Lapsa has published interviews with persecuted Russian journalists on his portal Pietek.com. Yuri Alekseev recalls that when a criminal case was brought against him in 2017, falsifying evidence, he appealed to various newspapers asking for an opportunity to state his position. "The Latvian ones ignored it altogether, and the Russian ones took a 'short commentary', reducing it to two lines. Like 'pro-Kremlin activist Alekseev' said 'it's not my fault'," the journalist recalls. Only Lato Lapsa agreed to post an extensive interview with Alekseev on his portal.
In turn, human rights activist Vladimir Linderman notes that Lato Lapsa's arrest has two main reasons. "First, Lapsa's books, where he brought to the public eye the secrets of the political kitchen. Many influential personalities didn't like that. Secondly, his portal Pietiek.com, which is not subject to censorship. Only there could I publish my articles about repression in Latvia," Linderman says.
Political scientist Maksim Reva, an expert on the Baltic states, explained the essence of the ethnocratic system built in Latvia using the example of Lapsa in a conversation with Izvestia. "Anyway, Lato Lapsa got off with 48 hours behind bars. He's Latvian, he's "right": therefore, it's impossible to do him any injustice at all. But Russian video blogger Dmitry Mataev, who boldly criticized the Latvian authorities for corruption, mismanagement and nationalism, received a year in prison last year. Jelena Kreile, a housewife who displayed Russian flags and slogans about friendship between Russia and Latvia in her apartment window, was given three years. Svetlana Nikolaeva is dying in a Riga prison without medical help - she was arrested for bringing money for a lawyer to a defendant in a political case from his sister in Russia. Almost no one in Latvia cares about their fate and Latvians are not indignant about it," Reva said.
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