(Latvian Public Broadcasting), Latvijas Radio For well over a decade, a case has been making its way at a painfully, sometimes farcically, slow pace through the Latvian legal system. It involves one of the country s best-known figures, the populist politician, businessman, mayor and alleged oligarch Aivars Lembergs.
As Latvian Radio reports, on 14 March 2007 media went mad when, locked in handcuffs, Lembergs was taken to the Riga City Center District Court, as prosecutors made their first moves to line up charges of bribery and money laundering on a huge scale against him as an individual (investigations into linked suspicions of corruption in Ventpils municipality had started in 2005). Now, nearly 14 years later, a verdict appears to be ready.