Finland Times

 

Drug addicts can not be let loose on the bathroom blue light. / Drug addicts can not inject in blue light. Photo – Lehtikuva.

Finland, Russia and Estonia have signed a cooperation protocol to increase cooperation in the fight against drug-related crimes, said a government press release on Thursday.

 

During a visit between February 26 and 27, Finnish Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen visited St Petersburg where she met Estonian Minister of the Interior Ken-Marti Vaher and Director of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service Minister Viktor Ivanov and signed the cooperation protocol.

 

Issues covered by the protocol include guidelines on the mutual application of controlled delivery between the countries.

 

Controlled delivery means a method by which a pre-trial investigation authority may refrain from intervening in the transport or other delivery of an object, substance or property, if this is necessary in order to identify persons participating in an offence that is being committed, or to detect an offence or a crime cluster that is more serious than the offence that is being committed.

 

“We have cooperated in controlled deliveries previously, too, but now we intend to step up this cooperation,” said Räsänen.

 

Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen, the plenary session on 25 February 2014. Photo – Lehtikuva.

The ministers agreed that antidrug cooperation between the countries should focus on targeted fight against transnational organised crime, undermining drug trafficking infrastructure and eliminating transnational drug trafficking routes.

 

The interior minister said increasing mobility between three countries would probably have an impact on the volume and type of transnational organised crime. “The more people cross the border, the greater the risk that there is crime involved,” she added.

 

The ministerial meeting took place in conjunction with a meeting of the FER group. Launched in 2003, the FER group is a cooperation forum of Finland, Estonia and Russia for combating crime.