The daily Helsingin Sanomat reported Monday that investigators had widened their net in an ongoing probe into how police officers maintained and used an informant database.
In addition to other top brass under suspicion of misconduct in the case, the head of the National Bureau of Investigation, Robin Lardot, has also caught the eye of investigators looking into how the register was used by Helsinki’s drug unit, headed by convicted ex-cop Jari Aarnio.
At the time, Lardot worked for the National Police Board, where he was responsible for oversight of informant register activities.
“The events relate to a period six years ago,” Lardot told Yle on Monday.
Lardot already questioned
The high-ranking officer said that he was recently informed of the suspicions hovering over him.
"It involves suspected misconduct where [authorities] are looking for a precedent case to determine how close police oversight should be over improprieties at individual police departments and in this case, at the Helsinki police department,” Lardot explained.
The NBI chief said that he had already been questioned over the matter.
“The events have to be thoroughly investigated. I have myself called for the matter to be properly and thoroughly probed. And I have also done so in an interrogation,” Lardot added.
Unprecedented police trial pending
So far in the case involving the police informant register, the office of the state prosecutor has pressed charges for official misconduct against former police commissioner Mikko Paatero, former Helsinki police commander Jukka Riikonen and current police chief Lasse Aapio. Aapio was later relieved of duty when the charges were laid.
The investigation itself began back in 2013, when then-Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen asked the office of the state prosecutor to determine whether the informant register at the Helsinki police department had been used appropriately and according to police regulations.
When the investigation became public, the police commissioner commented on the matter by saying it was “the most serious case in police history”.
The trial relating to the informant management case will begin in August at Helsinki District Court. In an unprecedented chapter of Finnish trial history, a group of former and current top police officers will appear as defendants.
Helsinki’s former storied drugs cop, Jari Aarnio, who is appealing a 10-year prison sentence for a welter of crimes including drug trafficking, has also been charged with official misconduct over management of the informant register.
