Members of the Riigikogu have been distributing direct regional investments or so-called protection money for years. There has also been talk for years of making the umbrella system more transparent, with the system of allocating budget funds also raising questions for the beneficiaries themselves. Alari Rammo, head of advocacy for the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations (NENO), finds the distribution of the protection money should be stopped.
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This article has been revised to correct several factual errors and to provide more context concerning the operations of Graanul Invest, the leading Estonian wood pellet company.
The Heinrich Boll Foundation and the Pulitzer Center provided grant support for this story.
When Arvi
Sepp was a boy in Soviet-ruled central Estonia, his parents would walk into the forest, carrying gifts.
“They would bring the first cut of meat from a cow, the first cup of beer from a cask.” He smiles, touching his newsboy’s cap over his white hair. “The first glass of vodka from the bottle.”
Walking haltingly over cobblestones, Sepp recalls how, decades earlier, his family would follow ancient footpaths to find a spring in the center of the hill that rises like an up-thrust fist from the swampy lowlands near his village of Paluküla. There, where the water bubbled up beneath a birch canopy, they laid the offering.