At the end of 2020, the company “SOAAR” developed the Electronic Online Voter Register (the ETVR system), which was used to conduct the 2021 municipal elections and the 2022 Saeima elections. The Prosecutor’s Office has thrown the evidence in the trash and claims that ETVR does not exist.
The 14th Saeima elections had concluded, the votes were counted, and the new Saeima convened for its first sitting on 1 November 2022. Exactly a week later, based on a decision by Internal Security Bureau (IDB) inspector Kristīne Kirilova, criminal proceedings for fraud were initiated, alleging that the company SIA “SOAAR” had not developed the ETVR system. How can that be – the voter register with which, for two years in a row, polling station workers registered arriving voters supposedly does not exist, in the view of the Prosecutor’s Office. Some kind of Schrödinger’s register…
To evaluate the process, the state institutions involved in the elections decided, after several months, to commission an independent assessment of the operation of the ETVR system in the Saeima elections. Thus, by paying 300 thousand euros – twice as much as the ETVR system itself had cost – the state hired the auditing firm E&Y and ordered this assessment. Six people – E&Y partner Nauris Kļava, E&Y Director for Technology and Cybersecurity with CGEIT, CISM and PRINCE2 certificates Rudīte Spriņģe, at that time E&Y IT auditor with an ISTQB tester’s certificate Anete Katrīna Rezevska, E&Y IT auditor and IT architect Mārtiņš Pakulis, and two more compliance specialists – carried out the audit and, a year after the criminal proceedings were initiated, delivered their verdict: the ETVR system is excellent; that is, of the 137 requirements that were analysed, 125 factors fully met the requirements, 2 factors partially met them, and 10 factors were not tested due to technical limitations. Non-compliant – 0.
The Cabinet of Ministers, too, in mid-2023, unlike the IDB and the Prosecutor’s Office, found the ETVR system and, in the explanatory note to legal act 23-TA-1417, stated that the ETVR system is critically important and significant for the state, that its use in the Saeima elections had been successful, and that future election organisation is not permissible without the ETVR system. In effect, this was used to justify the need to reallocate funds for a new, much more expensive procurement. It should be added that without the ETVR system the elections could not take place; it would be physically impossible.
The IDB spent three months reading the 11 pages contained in the E&Y report and decided that such a conclusion did not fit with the intended criminal case. Therefore, on 20 February 2024, the prosecutor of the Prosecution Office for Investigation of Criminal Offences in State Institutions Service, Džena Andersone, wrote by hand on the first page of the opinion that E&Y had been attached to some PMLP reply to a request from the Prosecutor’s Office, but that it did not pertain to what had been requested, and therefore the opinion is to be diverted to the archive file.
It seems that without an expert opinion the case might not hold up – the IDB apparently thought – and decided to order a different opinion. From an employee of SOAAR’s direct competitor, SIA “ZZ Dats”, Edgar Savčenko, who had worked there for 25 years and who, oh what a coincidence, had just started working at the Office of the Prosecutor General. Savčenko began working at the Prosecutor’s Office in May 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile entry, and the inspector gave him the task of writing the opinion that same May. Savčenko single-handedly prepared an opinion stating that the ETVR system does not exist and that in reality it is a different system – “Balsis”.
For information: The system “Balsis” mentioned in the excerpt performs completely different functions, for example, a ballot layout system, publicity portal, etc. The ETVR system can operate either together with the “Balsis” system or separately.
The case looked almost wrapped up, but then, what a misfortune, it turned out that the entire sector, led by the Latvian Information and Communications Technology Association (LIKTA), had awarded the system developed by “SOAAR” the highest recognition in the IT field – the “Platinum Mouse” – after the 2021 municipal elections. An industry award could perhaps be hidden, but both the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (PMLP) and the Central Election Commission (CVK), which were involved in the system development process, praised themselves and boasted about the achievement and the “Platinum Mouse” on their homepages.
As time went on, the “party culprit”, SIA “SOAAR” co-owner Renārs Kadžulis, collected evidence: publications, awards, opinions, minutes, related legal acts, and requested that the involved CVK, municipal and other employees be questioned. He submitted these to the IDB in August, November and December 2023, but it seems this was completely outside any plan – or possibly instructions – of IDB inspector Kirilova. She was apparently working nights on this complicated case – how else can one explain the fact that she had already electronically signed her decision to reject Kadžulis’s written evidence, which he sent on 17 August at 23:07, by 8:44 the next morning, 18 August?
The case had been cobbled together and the investigator handed it over to prosecutor Džena Andersone, who, after checking that there was nothing superfluous left in the file, submitted it to the court on 29 May last year and could cease pursuing “SOAAR”. However, it cannot be said that Schrödinger’s register stopped haunting the investigators themselves – for example, three months later, in September, Supreme Court senator and Central Election Commission member Marika Senkāne wrote in her article on the portal Delfi that, thanks to the ETVR information system, Latvia has become unique in the entire European Union, because no other country has such a modern and efficient information system for organising elections as Latvia.
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/sredingera-registrs-prokuratura-apgalvo-ka-sistema-ar-kuru-nodrosinatas-velesanas-neeksiste/
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