Always Twirling Twirling Towards Freedom.

I cannot stand it anymore. I am tired of lurking around the comment sections of other blogs picking at the crumbs which fall from thier table. If I want to debase myself publically I should have enough self-respect to be in total control. Of my debasement. In public. The Twitter is a quick 140 character fix for what ails me but like crack you are loading the pipe for the next hit even before you've peaked from the previous one.

And while I haven't gained any more credability than I had before I've come to grips with the fact that no one else has any eigther. It's a mark of our times.

So I figure it's just easier to fire up the old blog and start this horrible year off with as little effort as I can muster, because mark my words. It is going to be a horrible year. 

Moving Onwards

This is my last post on this site which I shall retire as opposed to delete because I think the links in the side bar are still worthy, as long as they stay up. I previously deleted a Russian site which I regret as many informative posts were lost, informative to a very small & select crowd I will admit but there was a lot of pictures and narrative covering my experiences from 2004 onward in Moscow. Marriage. Family. Love.

When I have it together, using either ELLO or WordPress I will post a follow up link on this site so those who care to continue following can do so. My twitter linked to this site will stay active as it takes little effort and given the political situation may be be worthy. And as always we never really leave, we still have a flat in Moscow & will always have a financial connection to Latvia, that's just life.

I have spent around 9 years in Latvia. I have few good things to say so I will say nothing. Good luck Latvia, you will need it.

Onwards!

Justice Chases Viktor Yanukovych?

One would hope so! I always wondered if Interpol was worth anything. Maybe we can get Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz & Donald Rumsfeld on that list!

Interpol Declares Ousted Ukrainian Leader Yanukovych a Wanted Man

KIEV — Interpol has put ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on the international wanted list on Ukrainian charges of embezzlement and financial wrong-doing, according to a notice on the international police organization's website on Monday.
Ukrainian authorities said Interpol's publication of a so-called red notice against the 64-year-old Yanukovych, who has been living in Russia since being ousted by street protests almost a year ago, empowered any police force to hand him over to Ukraine if he was detained.
In Moscow, the Russian Interfax news agency quoted a source familiar with the situation as saying Russia was unlikely to grant any request to extradite Yanukovych to Ukraine.
"Today, several months after Ukraine sent a request to Interpol in March 2014 with the arguments and explanations prepared by the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General's Office and the Security Service of Ukraine, an Interpol special commission has come to a decision," Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.
Yanukovych fled across the border into Russia in February last year after months of street protests in Kiev against his decision to back away from a deal that would take Ukraine towards integration with Europe and tighten economic ties with Russia, Ukraine's old Soviet master.
The pro-Western authorities who took over have accused him and a coterie of relatives and close allies, known as The Family, of accumulating huge wealth by robbing state coffers and plundering national assets through corrupt deals.
Yanukovych has denied that he or members of his family were involved in corruption.
After he fled, Russia said Yanukovych had been the victim of a "fascist" coup and went on to annex Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

In confrontation with Kiev's pro-Western leadership, it has supported separatists in Ukraine's industrialized east in a conflict in which more than 4,700 people have been killed, though Moscow denies its forces have been involved in fighting.

Latvian Corruption Or Incompetence?

Just another example of Latvian corruption. I suppose some would call the following an example of incompetence but if the State Audit Office were to turn this over to KNAB for investigation I'm sure it would quickly reveal sticky fingers on the part of the administrators of these funds, half of which are from the EU. So don't laugh too hard, that's your taxes being spent. Of the ten municipalities audited only one (Liepaja) was deemed as having distributed funds properly. Pretty awesome by any metric one would care to apply!

"A poor family" owned apartments in Riga and Jurmala house with land

One of the richest "poor families" having received poverty assistance lives in Sigulda - owning apartments in Riga and a house in Jurmala according to the State Audit Office's audit results for the provision of social assistance policies.

The audit examined 59 Sigulda families, of which the poverty status was granted to 39 families. Of these, 11 low-income families poverty status was deemed reasonable, but 24 families had no right to obtain such status.

The auditors found that families who had wrongly been given assistance failed to meet certain conditions to be taken into consideration for the granting of the status of poverty. For example, nine families in the audit owned a vehicle, two families owned shares in companies.

Three of the investigated families income exceeded the Cabinet of Ministers Regulations setting the level of low-income families to receive the poverty status. From these families for one person the municipality did not take into account income from operating activities and sale of real estate, as well as the Rural Support Service received subsidies for agriculture. One family a owned vehicle and real estate.

The poverty status was granted to the two families that owned the vehicle for more than three real estate and shares in companies. Furthermore, the level of family income in excess of the statutory order to get the status. One of these families owned two vehicles, five real estate, one of which is the apartment in the city center and the land with a house in Jurmala plus shares in two companies. Yet this family two months before acquiring the status of a needy family had sold two apartments in the center of Riga, gaining income of 192,087 euros.

What other recognized as needy family member was issued a loan of several tens of euros.

As reported, during the audit of ten municipalities of social assistance, the State Audit Office concluded that there is a drastic difference in social welfare policy. There are municipalities with quite easy to be poor personality, but there are also those in which such status is granted or at a set number of limitations status.

Also found that social services officials do not check what is the status of prayers level of income and material situation, thus allowing for the needy family status is granted to those who own without housing is still only six real estate or even a family owned nine vehicles.

I wonder if any of the recipients of these poverty assistance funds are sitting members of the Seima, it seems like too good a deal for them to pass up. ;)

It's A Wild And Wonderful Life

But what's it all mean!?

A Pack Of Gifts Now

The ho ho horror!

Latvia Just As Corrupt As It Ever Was!

I get a good chuckle every year when the various corruption indexes come out which invariably show Latvia's standing improving somewhat from year to year. Anyone who lives here knows better. The latest;

Foodie Fraud: Latvian Restaurant Chain Suspected of Tax Sam


Latvia's Asian restaurant chain Gan Bei has been accused of cooking more than delicious stir fry.

Financial police arrested seven people on Wednesday, including the wife of a member of parliament, on suspicion of cooking the firms books in a scheme that allegedly benefited them US$ 870,000 a month.

The suspects were held in connection with tax fraud and a scheme to under report earnings. At least two other people were taken into custody.

Officers of the State Revenue Service (SRS) searched at least 30 locations including the offices of catering company Lade Ko, it's subsidiary Gan Bei, and an unidentified cash register manufacturer. Gan Bei, which serves Japanese, Indian and Thai-inspired cuisine has ten outlets in and around the capital Riga.

Kaspers Podins, chief of the SRS, said at a press briefing that the cash register company under investigation had offered software to it's clients that let them fake having lower amounts of money in the registers, allowing them to skim off the remainder. The suspects, he said, had kept some of the money for themselves and used the rest to pay employees under the table.

Police also received parliamentary approval to search the house of MP Sergejs Potapkins, whose wife Galina Karmaca is a co-owner of Lade Ko and is one of the arrestees. When asked about the case Potapkin complained of "political speculation."

SRS General Director Kaspirs Cerneckis said that evidence obtained in the investigation could result in further charges against other retail and service companies.

Lade Ko confirmed to LETA that all Gan Bei locations have now reopened.

The salient points here;

• a Seima MP possibly benefited from this scheme
• said MP's wife is deeply involved and arrested
• the scheme is well thought out & organized over time
• many ppl involved  from employees to cash register mfg

All the above as well as the statement, "... evidence obtained in the investigation could result in further charges against other retail and service companies.", would indicate that the SRS thinks that this type of scheme is a wide spread problem. Not knowing who the cash register mfg is makes it difficult to appraise how many tainted pieces of equipment there are but it would be irresponsible not to speculate. I suppose that a list of business's exists and a high profile take down is calculated to put the fear in anyone running the shady software so that they clean up and pay taxes as money into government coffers is the main thing here, not criminal prosecutions because you'd have to have your head in the sand to think that it's possible to push a successful criminal case through the useless and corrupt Latvian judicial system.

My interest in this is kind of personal, one of the accountants is my neighbour who I witnessed being taken away by the SRS on Wednesday morning after showing up at 7:15 am and staying for two hours. A nice enough person but knowing the rest of my neighbours as I do I feel sorry that this person is now in the belly of the beast. Illegal schemes are rampant here as the number of knowing participants in this one would indicate.