Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Port, Transport

While the Office of the Prosecutor General had initially set the deadline for getting acquainted with the materials for July 31, Aivar Pilv, defense attorney for one of the accused, Allan Kiil, said that the time frame was too short and applied for the deadline to be stretched to September 1. The Office of the Prosecutor General partly approved the application, extending the time frame to August 22.

"There are 77 volumes or approximately 19,000 pages of accusatory material, including documents, minutes of meetings, correspondence and other information, which can not be read like a storybook. To finish substantially familiarizing ourselves with the charge by July was unrealistic. The material has been handled constantly and working through the case substantially is going on every day," Pilv told BNS.

He said that he does not wish to substantially comment on the charge yet. "Firstly, because familiarizing myself with the materials is still underway. But the first impression is that there are a number of debatable and unclear questions both in terms of legality and evidentiality. There is definitely basis for filing applications," Pilv said, not wishing to clarify what kind of applications he was planning to file.

The Office of the Prosecutor General confirmed that the Internal Security Service at the beginning of June finished the pretrial investigation of former Port of Tallinn CEO Ain Kaljurand and former board member Allan Kiil, and has forwarded the documents to the defense.

The Internal Security Service (ISS) detained Kiil and Kaljurand on August 26, 2015. On the same day three more people were detained as suspects in bribe-giving and another three as suspected accessories to bribe-giving, but they were released a few days later. Kaljurand and Kiil were released at the beginning of January but placed under electronic surveillance. Later on two persons connected with the Polish shipyard that is building new ferries for Port of Tallinn subsidiary TS Laevad were declared suspects as well.

The former board members are suspected of accepting bribes on a large scale over a period of several years at least since 2009. The Public Prosecutor's Office has said the placement of orders for the construction of two new ferries at a shipyard in Gdansk, Poland is a central point of the investigation.