MP Jānis Urbanovičs on the Saeima decision in the Jānis Ādamsons case

Jānis Ādamsons, representing Harmony (Saskaņa) party, has become the first politician suspected of spying for Russia. On Thursday, the Saeima allowed him to be arrested. Jānis Urbanovičs, the chairman of the organization, which has been widely criticized for the cooperation agreement with United Russia, the ruling party in Russia, is in no hurry to express opinions on the accusation, but gives a hint that the arrest may be politically motivated.

Māris Kučinskis (ZZS), Chairman of the Saeima National Security Committee, points out that there is serious evidence in the case of former Interior Minister J. Ādamsons that the suspicion of espionage for Russia is justified. It is known that there are more than 40 occasions of passing information in the J. Ādamsons case.

Criminal proceedings have been instituted in accordance with Section 85, Paragraph one of the Criminal Law for illegal collecting of non-disclosable information for the purposes of transferring it or committing the transfer thereof to a foreign state or foreign organisation, either directly or through mediation of another person, or for illegal collecting of other information or transferring thereof to a foreign intelligence service on its behalf, directly or with the intermediation of another person.

The first convict after this article, which was set in the Criminal Law in 2016, was also a member of Harmony - Aleksandrs Krasnopjorovs, a road expert of Latvijas dzelzceļš (LDz). According to the accusation, by filming from LDz online video surveillance systems and video archives, he illegally obtained information about the movement of NATO military equipment in the territory of Latvia and passed this information to a contact in Russia. He was sentenced to one year and six months' imprisonment and 200 hours of community service.

Will you ask Ādamsons to lay down the mandate of the Saeima MP?

I don't know what really happened. I need to get acquainted with the case first. I don't know, he's mostly been in hospitals for the last year and a half, I've rarely seen him. Maybe he did something like that while in a hospital. I am not acquainted with the case, I do not have such a possibility. So I can't say anything, we will know in time.

How do you evaluate Ādamsons' work so far?

He was good as an employee when he was not ill. Especially in his field, but he had a very sharp tongue and was very demanding. The bar for his demands was very high against his current successors. I think that Ādamsons made them so angry that they could no longer stand him because he did so in public - in the committee, in plenary and also in the media. He was very sharp in his demands, but I consider his sharpness not as working for another country, but as a desire to fix things here in Latvia.

Municipal elections have just taken place, there is more than a year until the Saeima elections - it would be difficult to use pre-election battles as an explanation for what happened…

It could be linked. My analysis coincided with that of some colleagues. They had already buried us, Harmony, and were waiting for the last funeral bell in this election - first in the extraordinary elections in Riga and now in these municipal elections, when they thought we would sink. Everyone said that we are already dead. Now that this prediction has not come true, it is necessary to work actively for it to happen - to kill Harmony, if it does not die by itself. I think there are many overt and covert political figures who want us to start pushing up daisies. Some would like to take over our electorate, others would like to remove us for being an obstacle with such constantly annoying ratings.