The Central Criminal Police is investigating a rare crime of treason - According to Yle, suspected unauthorized intelligence activity has been recorded in Virolahti
The Central Criminal Police has started a preliminary investigation into the suspected unauthorized intelligence activity. This is an extraordinary criminal investigation in Finland. In addition, the police are investigating the suspected disclosure of a security secret.
According to Yle's information, the suspected crimes have been recorded in Virolahti, Kajaani and Oulu.
The police are investigating two suspects of the crime of treason.
The Central Criminal Police has been conducting an investigation since the fall, where the criminal title is unauthorized intelligence activities.
In addition, the investigation has suspected the disclosure of a security secret.
These are very rare criminal suspicions in Finland.
KRP confirms that the degrees are ongoing. In the suspected unauthorized intelligence activity, the head of the investigation is the crime commissioner Masi Puolakka . The head of the investigation into the suspected security secret disclosure case is Jukka Nurmenniemi, the crime commissioner.
Neither of them wants to say more about the unfinished degrees for now. Yle has no information about what kind of cases it is.
According to Yle's information, the criminal report for unauthorized intelligence activities was filed in September of this year. However, it is not necessarily the time of the suspected crime.
The police's public crime statistics reveal that the incident was recorded in South-Eastern Finland. According to Yle's information, it is Virolahti, located on the eastern border in Kymenlaakso. The municipality has, among other things, the Vaalimaa border station.
Last summer, two notifications were made to the authorities' information systems about the suspected disclosure of a security secret.
According to Yle, one notice was registered in Kajaani, the other in Oulu. However, it is possible that the reports refer to one and the same case, which is currently under investigation by the KRP.
It is not known that the degrees of unauthorized intelligence activity and disclosure of security secrets have any connection with each other.
KRP does not comment on whether there is a suspect or suspects in the cases. It is clear from the district courts that since last summer, no one has been required to be imprisoned under the criminal titles in question.
Unauthorized intelligence activities involve spying on another state
The suspected unauthorized intelligence activity that is now under investigation is the only case with that title in Statistics Finland's crime reporting statistics, which go back to 2006.
Unauthorized spying is a serious crime of treason, punishable by four months to six years in prison.
Unauthorized intelligence is when someone obtains information to harm a foreign country or for the benefit of another foreign country.
Based on the title, it can therefore be concluded that Finland was not the target of the suspected espionage activity. Unauthorized intelligence activities can be committed by a person whose activities pose a danger to Finland's foreign relations.
Associate professor of criminal law Tatu Hyttinen from the University of Turku says that the law drafting work has started from the assumption that the perpetrator of unauthorized intelligence activities could primarily be a person in the service of a foreign state's intelligence service.
- But in itself it is possible that any foreigner or Finn commits the act. The perpetrator could be, for example, a journalist or a researcher who spies on a foreign country from Finland, Hyttinen describes on a general level.
He does not comment on cases under investigation.
According to Hyttinen, information obtained without permission may concern the national defense, security or other matters directly related to the foreign power.
Obtaining illegal information about Finland would be investigated, for example, as espionage or aggravated espionage.
Tatu Hyttinen emphasizes that espionage against Finland is also clearly more widely punishable than unauthorized intelligence activities against a foreign state.
Espionage can therefore also be convicted when the information concerns, for example, Finland's state economy, foreign trade or energy supply.
- In other words, unauthorized intelligence activities are, as it were, criminalized intelligence activities in themselves, i.e. the fact that the Finnish state is used to spy on a foreign state.
Disclosing a security secret can lead to a prison sentence
Revealing a security secret is also a crime severely sanctioned by the Criminal Code. It carries a minimum penalty of four months and a maximum penalty of four years in prison.
A person who unlawfully publishes, expresses, hands over or transmits to another person information that has been classified as secret for the sake of Finland's external security can be convicted of the crime. The information may be related to national defense, for example.
There have been a few criminal reports about the disclosure of security secrets registered in the authorities' system in the last ten years. A large part of them is related to the Helsingin Sanomat Viestikoekeskus case.
That case was processed in the Helsinki district court during the rest of the year. The closing statements of the prosecution and the defense were heard earlier this week. According to the prosecutor, the journalists of HS were guilty of revealing a security secret in December 2017, when the paper published news about the Defense Forces' Communication Test Center. The accused deny the charges.
In addition, in May, an investigation report was filed with the police department of Southwest Finland regarding the disclosure of a security secret. The police considered that there was no reason to start a preliminary investigation in the case.
https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-2000 ... x_tr_hl=et
https://yle.fi/a/74-20008880
