Financial Services, Internet, Latvia, Legislation, Taxation, Technology

Finance and Economic Investigation Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Aiga Senberga told LETA that the office is not commenting on the charges at the moment.

At the end of March, the police returned the criminal process against Poikans to prosecutor's office investigating financial and economic crimes, asking that charges be brought against Poikans.

The police believe that Poikans, after ascertaining a fault in the Revenue Service's EDS, obtained commercial information from the EDS – 250 electronic documents overall.

After the unauthorized download of the documents, Poikans viewed them, thereby violating the Commercial Law and the Freedom of Information Law's provisions on commercial secrets.

The police believe that Poikans, in downloading and later making public the EDS data that contained a large amount of information about companies and residents' personal data, infringed on these persons' right to privacy.

This carries a prison sentence of up to two years or community work, or a fine.

Last August, the prosecutor's office dismissed the case against Poikans, concluding that he had not hacked the EDS database in 2010 as Poikans did not have to "break into" the system in order to gain access to the data therein.