Latvian special services provided evidence to the Lukashenko regime to convict Viktar Babaryka

On July 6, the Supreme Court of Belarus sentenced Viktar Babaryka, one of Belarus' most prominent opposition figures, to 14 years in prison. In 2020, Viktar Babaryka planned to run in the presidential election, but he was detained shortly before the election. Formally, the lawsuit was not political, as the candidate for the presidency of Belarus was accused of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.

Immediately after the verdict, the US embassy in Belarus issued a statement on its Twitter account: "The cruel sham of the Belarus court system is on display today with the Viktar Babaryka sentencing, showing the Lukashenka regime will stop at nothing to keep power."

The European Commission responded similarly to Viktar Babaryka's conviction, whose spokesman Peter Stano said that this "sentence is one of at least 125 unfair and arbitrary recent verdicts by Belarusian courts in politically motivated trials, often held behind closed doors and without due process of law."

Throughout this demonstration of international solidarity in condemning the imprisonment of one of the most visible leaders of the Belarusian opposition, the Latvian government and the Saeima remained silent.

Latvia's silence can probably be explained by the fact that in the context of the trial of Viktar Babaryka, Latvia is gaining a bad reputation as a pillar of the Lukashenko regime. Although yesterday Una Rēķe, a spokeswoman for the Latvian Prosecutor's Office, stated that Latvia had "refused to comply with Belarus' requests for legal assistance related to the opposition Viktar Babaryka", as Neatkarīgā pointed out in the August 12, 2020 article "Our special services' assistance to Belarus threatens Latvia's reputation” (in Latvian), Alexander Lukashenko's main political opponent was neutralized in the 2020 presidential election using information received from the Latvian Financial Intelligence Unit.

Already at that time, we pointed out that the assistance of Latvian special services to the Belarusian authorities could be very costly for Latvia and that "there is reason to believe that the Latvian Financial Intelligence Unit cooperates with the Belarusian authorities not on its own initiative but by order of certain leading Latvian politicians". Already at that time, we called on the members of the Saeima to find out which of Latvia's most prominent politicians decided to allow supplying information and evidence to the Lukashenko regime, which opened the possibility of convicting the most prominent Belarusian opposition for economic crimes.

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