Estonian journalists fined over money laundering story
Tarmo Vahter and Sulev Vedler’s article in Eesti Ekspress
Two Estonian journalists and a media outlet have been fined for failing to seek permission for a story covering pre-trial proceedings in a major money laundering scandal. The April 2022 decision by Harju District Court has been the subject of an alert by Media Freedom Rapid Response, as an example of public interest journalism being obstructed.
In March 2022, reporters Tarmo Vahter and Sulev Vedler published an article in the weekly newspaper Eesti Ekspress which named former management personnel at Swedbank Estonia as being under suspicion of involvement in money laundering between 2014 and 2016.
The Harju District Court fined both journalists and their publisher 1,000 euros ($1043) each for publishing the article without the permission of the prosecutor’s office.
The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR,) which tracks press freedom violations in the EU, has critcised the court’s decision, which appears to have been based on a 2004 ruling from the European Court of Human Rights about paparazzi photos of Caroline, Princess of Hanover.
The question at issue, said MFRR, was qualitatively different from the privacy concerns of European royalty. “In this case at hand, the public interest is unquestionable: the article was related to the suspected fraud at a major financial institution that had possible implications for public funds”.
MFRR questioned whether a prosecutors office should be making decisions about what information was in the public interest and argued that the relevant information was already in the public domain. Swedbank had in fact told the Tallinn Stock Exchange that the prosecutor’s office suspected it of possible money laundering, one day before the publication of the impugned article in Eesti Ekspress.
The organisation said that, given that several former bankers had backed up the story, the writers of the article had clearly worked in accordance with prevailing professional standards.
An appeal has been filed.