Let's start by clarifying a few very simple things. Do you trust the police?

Generally, yes.

What about the Prosecutor's Office?

My faith and trust have been shaken.

And the courts?

Yes.

Public trust in the police is somewhere around 80–90 percent, the courts around 70, and the Prosecutor's Office just over 60. My understanding was that your views were more or less similar.

No. Of all these institutions, I trust the courts the most, because at least I have not personally seen outright, obvious abuses in the judicial system. There are incorrect rulings and correct rulings. But, frankly speaking, I have not seen dishonesty.

What I have seen, however, is in the work of the Internal Security Service (ISS), the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA), and also the Prosecutor's Office — and specially in recent times. And what is even worse is that no one reacts to this, no internal corrections are made, and the wound is simply allowed to fester.

In public discourse we often hear arguments like: we shouldn't take the criminals' side or help offenders. Why is it still reasonable to speak out and be critical on these issues?

Helping criminals… criminals also have fundamental rights, even if someone has committed a crime. They have the fundamental right for guilt to be determined through a fair judicial process, without cutting corners, and without being treated dishonestly. That's not really the issue here.

What we're actually talking about with all these norms is that people's communications data should not be collected indiscriminately and on a mass scale and stored for years, effectively allowing uncontrolled surveillance. Or that the rights of the Prosecutor's Office need to be curtailed to some extent, and the legal norms themselves need to be narrowed.

These rules are not meant to protect criminals. They are meant to protect honest people—so that honest people are not needlessly dragged into proceedings, so that pointless criminal cases based on misinterpretations and miscarriages of justice do not arise, and so on. Ultimately, this is about protecting honest citizens, not criminals.

In the past few weeks, the media has been writing about a complex concept known as "violation of an official restriction," and more broadly about amendments to the Anti-Corruption Act. This whole debate has now ended with the justice minister simply withdrawing the bill, after the government failed to reach an agreement on it. How do you view this controversy?

I've been following the life cycle of this law since 2024, when the same justice minister defended the bill before the Riigikogu at its first reading and spoke very reasonably. She said that our current official restrictions are vague, essentially rubbery, and that they need fixing—that we must end the practice of dragging people through proceedings for years for no reason.

I saw very reasonable and perfectly normal proposed amendments that would have made the law clearer. Then the process stalled for a long time. And then the bill came back from the Ministry of Justice essentially unchanged—meaning all those good provisions had been removed.

Now, as I understand it, members of parliament — the legislature — played a sort of mischievous trick by trying to make the law constitutional as well. And then we saw what happened: particularly furious articles appeared in Delfi, with commentary coming from the "holy trinity"—the Prosecutor's Office, the ISS, and the Police —and [former Prosecutor General] Lavly Perling also chimed in a bit, claiming that Estonia's entire success story in fighting corruption was about to be dismantled.

The arguments we heard were that if the law were changed this way, it would no longer be possible to film, wiretap, surveil, or record people in the future. [The minister of justice] Liisa Pakosta panicked; the chair of the Constitutional Committee noted that the coercive authorities and law enforcement had basically achieved a victory over elected representatives.

That was how it looked, and I think that's how it really was. I am very strongly opposed to the idea that in a country calling itself a state governed by the rule of law — where constitutional order is based on the separation of powers — something like this is even possible. That the legislative branch caves in like this and truly submits to such pressure. It was sad to watch.

But on the other hand, we live in a free country. Speech is free, citizens are free — isn't it possible that the ISS and the Prosecutor's Office were simply exercising that freedom by presenting the bill the way they saw it?

The ISS and the Prosecutor's Office are not bearers of fundamental rights. We are. Estonian citizens are the bearers of fundamental rights. The Prosecutor's Office and the ISS have no other task or interest than to enforce the law.

They won't be able to protect you as well in the future.

They won't be able to protect as well — or rather, they won't be able to surveil as well. I understand perfectly well that taking away or limiting their surveillance powers causes them great concern.

Right now, I have the feeling that they operate in a completely unregulated zone. What have we learned in recent weeks and months? We've learned that in Estonia, tens of thousands of people are likely being surveilled — by wiretapping, that is — on an ongoing basis.

And not only suspects are surveilled, but also people who communicate with suspects — those who exchange emails or have phone conversations with them. As we know, these people are not informed. Even if they happen to be lawyers, defense attorneys — they are not informed.

So how many people are actually being wiretapped, in the most classic form of surveillance — we don't even know.

I know that old legendary saying about how an honest person has nothing to fear. I'll say that this time I'm being sarcastic.

An honest person has a lot to fear — specifically, criminal proceedings. If a criminal case is initiated against someone and lasts the next four years, and in the end perhaps the charges are dropped or the person is acquitted — it's still a deeply unpleasant experience. Some people lose their health, some people lose their lives. Both have happened; I've seen it with my own eyes.

Wiretapping is one thing. Another is the collection of communications metadata. The Republic of Estonia has known for five years now that the mass collection of communications data — that is, who communicates with whom, who texts and calls whom, where someone is located, and who they are located with — is contrary to European Union law. The Supreme Court has said so as well.

This question has surfaced in the news a couple of times: why isn't this fixed? You certainly communicate during recesses with prosecutors, judges, politicians. Why isn't it fixed?

I get the sense that the political will to fix it maybe even exists, but that resistance comes from within the system itself. One recent, telling example was April 1, when Liisa Pakosta said that the current blanket system of communications data collection is unacceptable, violates EU law, and must be changed.

What happened the very next day? I saw a procedural document from the Ministry of Justice saying the opposite — that no, the current system is perfectly fine.

So, in contradiction to the Court of Justice of the European Union and in contradiction to the Estonian Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice tells the Estonian court that there is nothing wrong with the current system, that it does not violate rights under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and does not violate the Estonian Constitution.

When you see the Estonian state itself failing to comply with its own court rulings and openly disregarding European court decisions, you start to wonder: what can you even do to protect your rights at all?

What would actually have happened if the Anti-Corruption Act had passed its third reading in parliament and the president had likely promulgated it? What would have changed in our daily lives?

What would have changed is that people could no longer be harassed with criminal cases based on violations of official restrictions.

In my view, the main flaw of the current law — and this was raised at a public hearing of the Constitutional Committee — is that it is constitutionally problematic to impose such severe consequences merely for creating a risk. For a violation of an official restriction to be criminal, there should also be some harmful consequence. That is precisely what lawmakers were trying to achieve.

In practice, current case law means that if you act as a public official while in a conflict of interest but do something beneficial, that is still punishable — and paradoxically, the more good you do, the more serious the crime you commit.

That is completely absurd. It should not work that way.

You interpreted it one way, but Delfi claimed that fighting corruption would have become a profitable activity in the future. Did Delfi misunderstand the issue?

Delfi definitely misunderstood it completely. What example did they give? They said that if the value of an official act is €39,999, it would be a misdemeanor rather than a crime and therefore "profitable." But where is that line supposed to be drawn?

Maybe one could indeed argue that setting the criminal threshold at €40,000 is too high. Maybe it should be €4,000, or maybe 200 euros, which is the minimum threshold for property crimes generally — but somewhere the line has to be drawn. There has to be some kind of harmful consequence.

What is equally absurd is this: if a public official uses personal contacts to make a decision that is exceptionally beneficial to the state, that person is treated as just as much a criminal as someone who causes harm to the state. The current situation—where harmful, neutral, and state-beneficial decisions can all equally be criminal—simply does not work.

In that debate, the Prosecutor's Office and law‑enforcement agencies were very active in pushing their message and presenting themselves as fighting corruption. But this so‑called "club of attorneys-at-law" — Paul Keres, Carri Ginter, Allar Jõks — you were relatively quiet. Why?

When exactly have we been silent? On what question?

On this very issue of the Anti‑Corruption Act. Maybe things were busy, maybe you didn't get around to articulating your position as actively. I understand the positions existed, but you weren't really visible in the discussion.

No one asked us. When Delfi launched that campaign, it's obvious they only consulted the Prosecutor's Office, the PPA, and the ISS. Most likely that was arranged that way.

Let's correct that mistake now.

They also asked Perling, who is known internationally as an anti‑corruption crusader. But yes — if anyone had asked us, we certainly would have explained the matter.

So what should be done to fix the situation, from your perspective?

The Anti‑Corruption Act should be amended so that it becomes a normal law that a normal person can understand. This does not require rocket science.

We are not the first nor the last country to deal with conflicts of interest. There are large international organizations that have already defined rules for avoiding conflicts of interest — the European Parliament, the OECD, the European Commission. The list goes on for miles. We should simply take best practices, analyze them, and apply them in Estonian law. There's nothing complicated about that. Right now, it feels as though we've taken on some impossible mission — trying to define who qualifies as a "related person" to a public official.

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