News | Latvia | Crime

State Fire and Rescue Service last night received 70 reports about fires in Latvia, which is the largest daily number registered so far this year. One person was killed yesterday, three suffered injuries, and another three were rescued by firefighters.

Today cybercrime and data protection experts from across the EU came together to mark the coming European Data Protection Day, exchanging insight into the evolving threat of cybercrime, in particular identity theft.

The Europol Director Rob Wainwright focused on the threat of cybercrime to global society during his intervention today at the World Economic Forum Davos summit.

Today, the Riga Vidzeme District Court decided to release the former president of "Latvijas Krajbanka", Ivars Prieditis, from custody, LETA was informed by Prieditis' lawyer Saulvedis Varpins.

This past weekend, the State Revenue Service (SRS), in cooperation with the Latvian Border Guard and Belarus law enforcement institutions foiled an attempt to smuggle into Latvia 3.1 million illegal cigarettes. A criminal process has been started, with officials at the State Revenue Service's Customs Administration in Latgale Province (southeastern Latvia) named as suspects in the smuggling scheme.

As part of its responsibility to monitor developments in the threat from organised crime in Europe, Europol has identified a growth in the trade of illegal and counterfeit pesticides. The exceptional ‘low risk – high profit’ margin, combined with the lack of harmonisation in legislation and implementation, make this a fast growing area of organised crime.

An international organised crime network, responsible for the large-scale production and trafficking of synthetic drugs, has been broken up following an extensive investigation by European law enforcement authorities.

Riga Regional Court decided today to break up the criminal case on the January 13, 2009 riots in Riga's Old Town into three separate criminal processes.

269 suspects identified and 112 arrested
Law enforcement agencies from 26 European countries, supported and coordinated by Europol, have carried out a major crackdown against online child sex abuse file-sharing networks. So far ‘Operation Icarus’ has helped to identify 269 suspects and arrest 112 suspects, spread across 22 involved countries.*

Spanish authorities, working with Europol, have dismantled a criminal group responsible for drug trafficking and distributing more than two million counterfeit euros in 20 EU countries. In total 25 people from the criminal group have been arrested.