Baiba Braže rumored to replace Kariņš as Foreign Minister

Government looks to bourse list air Baltic by year-end

On April 13, rumors and reports circulated that Baiba Braže, an experience Latvian professional diplomat, was going to be nominated to replace Krišjānis Kariņš as Latvia’s Foreign Minister following his March 28 resignation in the wake of the so-called “charter flight scandal” over his use of expensive private air transport while he was Prime Minister.

Braže, born in 1966, describes herself on Linkedin as follows:

NATO Assistant Secretary General (2020-2023). Career diplomat, leader, manager with a longstanding expertise in security and defence policy, strategic communications, international relations.
Skilled in government, International Relations, International Organizations, Policy Analysis, Diplomacy, NATO, European Union.
Previously ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Indonesia, Permanent Representative to the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Baiba Braže, the Latvian professional diplomat reportedly to be nominated to replace Krišjānis Kariņš as Foreign Minister. Photo: NATO

He nomination will be formally announced on April 15, according to often reliable local media reports. On social media, the first trolls have appeared mudslinging at Braže, claiming her mother Nina was linked to Soviet-era “social organizations” linked to the Latvian KGB. One should note a Latvian saying that the favorite subject for ripping apart by a Latvian is any other Latvian.

 Latvia’s former Prime Minister and outgoing Foreign Minister may face personal criminal liability for spending state funds on “illegal” charter flights on state business, Latvia’s Prosecutor-General Juris Stukāns told journalists last Wednesday.

“We conclude that Latvian law doesn’t permit the Prime Minister or any other government official to use charter flights,” he said.

Stukāns spoke after Latvian State Auditor Edgars Korčagins and State Audit Office board member Inga Vilka presented a detailed report on Kariņš use of charter flights on state business from 2021 to 2023.

The report concluded that at least EUR 221 566 from the state budget were illegally spent, and at least EUR 323 688 in European Union funds were “uneconomically” spent on charter flights for Kariņš as Prime Minister and his staff. Laws against the waste of public funds by government officials were violated, according to the report,

As the State Audit Office report was released, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa announced that she was suspending Jānis Citkovskis, the head of the State Chancellery, the agency responsible for making Kariņš and other government officials’ travel arrangements.

Regarding the State Chancellery, the Audit Office report said “The State Chancellery made procurements for business trips in violation of the Law on Public Procurement, violations of the Accounting Law were also found,”

Stukāns said the Audit Office report and materials used to compile it were being transferred to the Prosecutor-General’s office as evidence in the investigation of charter flights by Kariņš as Prime Minister and those involved in arranging them,

On March 22, the Prosecutor General presented a case for criminal investigation to Latvia’s  Bureau For Preventing and Combating Corruption (KNAB).  A preliminary inquiry by the prosecutor at the time found that “for special charter trips, which were organized from 2021 to 2023, larger amounts were spent than were foreseen in the contracts concluded with travel agencies for the organization of charter travel.”

That statement seemed to place the main responsibility for misspending funds on the State Chancellery, but Wednesday’s remarks by Stukāns pointed to Kariņš personally as well.

The “charter flight” scandal broke last fall when the opposition United List (AS) party demanded an explanation of the former Prime Minister’s travel expenditures after a local news site reported that Kariņš had spent over EUR 600 000 of state funds on some 15  charter flights instead using commercial airlines.

Karinš, in statements through his office as Foreign Minister, said that the charter flights, while possibly more expensive than commercial travel, were necessary to save time for the prime minister and staff members or to quickly return to state business in Latvia if an international conference took longer than planned.

Kariņš, 59, was born in the US to Latvian refugee parents. He moved to Latvia in the mid-1990s, and entered politics as a founder of the New Era party in 2002, a predecessor of the current centrist-liberal New Unity.

Political observers say the delay in naming someone (reportedly Braže) to  replace Kariņš  shows that that the centrist-liberal New Unity (JV) party has been shaken by the “charter flight scandal” and charges of tax evasion by the party brought by a long-standing JV high official.

At its meeting April 9, the Latvian government said it was moving ahead with plans to quote minority shares of state and municipal owned companies on the stock exchange. Finance Minister Arvils Ašeradens spoke of a short list of 20 companies that could have initial public offerings (IPOs) in the next couple of years.  The national carried air Baltic could be prepared for an IPO by the end of this year or early 2025, he said.

The Finance Minister also said that Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), telecommunications, internet and entertainment provider TET and its subsidiary Citrus Solutions would also be part of the IPO program. All are directly or indirectly minority held by Sweden’s Telia. When asked whether selling the government’s shares of LMT and TET would not amount to “privatizing” these companies to Telia, Prime Minister Siliņa cryptically said that one could “do the opposite.”

The ”privatization” of LMT and TET (formerly Lattelecom) has been a never-ending story between Latvia and Sweden’s Telia, which has acquired control over its subsidiaries in Estonia and Lithuania, but has been steadily and repeatedly stone-walled by a series of Latvian governments.

Ašeradens also indicated the government was considering abandoning plans for a wind farm jointly owned by state-owned Latvenergo and the state forest management company Latvijas valsts meži and creating a green energy subsidiary under Latvenergo that would be stock exchange listed.

Also up for listing would be the high voltage distribution network  Augstsprieguma Tīkli, currently a unit of Latvenergo, the national energy utility that, by law, may not be privatized.