Astonishing Latvia

Article published by Ventbunkers Press Service: inf130319-judge-Melina-Ventbunkers-EN

You will not be able to image, what we have to read about the latvian legal system. The attacged article says: „Melina’s ruling suggests that this is no longer poor judging.“ – now what does this mean today?

Is Latvia a country where you can buy any decision from the judges – as long as you have enough money – like Olegs Stepanovs?

Read for yourself the latest news about the corrupt court system in Latvia:

in Baltic Course!

Here an abstract of the article:

In December 2012, Judge Melina of the Riga Centre District Court became famous when she ordered some legally impossible provisional measures against two of the richest companies in Latvia.
She ordered that these companies could not anymore register any changes in the Register of Enterprises unless some minority shareholders (Olegs Stepanovs’ company Topmar with less than 13% of the votes in the case of Ventbunkers and Stepanovs’ Lawyer Alekseys Ovods with less than 0.1% of the votes in the case of LNT) would give their consent to the registration. Many people asked with which means of doubtful legality she could be convinced to do something impossible like this.
But then, the Senate of the Supreme Court of Latvia ruled that provisional measures of this type are generally impermissible in commercial litigation. The Supreme Court’s ruling was notified to Melina. Everybody expected that she would follow the higher Court’s ruling and lift the impossible measures. But on 15 March 2013 judge Melina did the opposite and refused to lift the provisional measures. Her struggle to distinguish this case from the one handled by the Supreme Court can be viewed as artificial and bringing embarrassment to the legal community in her defiance to brush away the position taken by the Supreme Court. Melina’s ruling suggests that this is no longer poor judging. Instead, it may be viewed as an intentionally illegal decision, a criminal offence. The fact that judge Melina is the Chairman of the Riga Centre District Court (Rīgas pilsētas Centra rajona tiesas priekšsēdētāja) makes the situation even more disturbing and once again reveals a fundamental deficiency in the Latvian judicial system.

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