On 27 January of the current year the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway and the Embassy of Norway had a special visit to the representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and the State Police. The purpose of the visit was to establish the results achieved, progress and future activities of the EEA grant project “Support to State Police for acceleration and quality improvement of the investigation of economic crimes in Latvia”. It was emphasized during the visit that thanks to the possibilities provided by the EEA grants, professional knowledge was so far strengthened for 1624 officials of the law enforcement authorities via different thematic studies, conferences and workshops.
The visit was opened by Normunds Grūbis, the Deputy Head of the State Police, Head of the Central Administrative Department, who thanked the representatives of Norway for showed interest to become acquainted with the achieved results and future plans of the project. "A lot has been performed, but the project will continue until April 2024. Therefore, there is still a lot to be performed," emphasized Normunds Grūbis.
Vitālijs Polovinskis, the Head of the State Police Central Criminal Police Department Economic Crime Combatting Department (ECCD) 2nd Division, introduced with the structure, current work and achievements of the ECCD for improvement of investigation of economic crimes. In order to achieve the results proposed for the project, already 10 different trainings, workshops and conferences have been held in the field. Experts not only from Latvia, but also from Island, Great Britain, USA, Netherlands, Germany and other countries have shared their experience. There is still a plan to implement at least 8 different measures for improvement of professional knowledge - workshops, conferences and trainings - until the end of the project.
Deniss Belouss, the Head of the State Police Central Criminal Police Department Forensic Science Department (FSD) Expert-Examination Bureau, informed about the achievements in the field of professional knowledge and improvement of skills for trial of cases. Deniss Belouss presented the achieved results in the field of expert-examination of DNS, IT, accounting, documents and audio. “So far we have trained 30 officials of the State Police during 14 different trainings and experience exchange trips in Switzerland, Great Britain, France, Estonia, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and other cooperation countries. It is planned to train at least 45 another police officers,” said Deniss Belouss.
After the informative presentations, the premises of the ECCD, Cyber Crime Combatting Department (CCCD) and FSD, which are planned to be renovated within the framework of the project, were showed to the guests. Currently the designing works in the field of improvement of infrastructure and technical capacity have been completed and active work is performed on the organization of construction processes.
The purpose of the project is to ensure more effective prevention and combatting of economic crimes, including faster and better quality pre-trial investigation and forwarding of documents for criminal prosecution. Cooperation partners of the State Policy in the project are State Agency for Security, Information Centre of the Ministry of the Interior and OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The key activities, being implemented within the framework of the project, are improvement of infrastructure and technical capabilities (renovation of ECCD, CCCD and FSD); improvement of professional knowledge in the field of investigation of economic crimes and performance of expert-examinations by organizing workshops, practical trainings, experience exchange trips and international conferences.
Visit was organized within the framework of European Economic area grant 2014-2021 programme “International Police Cooperation and Combating Crime” project No.EEZ/VP/2020/1 “Support to the State Police for increasing effectiveness and quality of economic crime investigation in Latvia”