OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2014. The State Prosecutor General launched a criminal investigation into the VEB Fund case to clarify the circumstances around a forged letter by Vahur Kraft and its origin.
 
The case concerns what appears to be a botched attempt by Estonian officials in the 1990s to recover Estonian funds frozen in the Soviet-era VEB bank. It was sparked by the revelation, in a central bank internal audit, that in 1995 someone at the Bank of Estonia misrepresented the true situation in order to try to recover money from the Russian Federation, uudised.err.ee reported.

Former central bank governor Vahur Kraft submitted a forged document during a hearing last year. According to the adviser of the prosecutor’s office, Carola Merzin, the criminal investigation was launched in connection with the forged document presented by Kraft.

Kraft had been called in to the parliamentary committee investigating the case in 2013 to testify on matters related to the original 1995 document, which said a Russian company, TSL International, had a claim for 32.3 million dollars frozen in VEB Bank.

According to Merzin, other elements will be checked of a possible criminal offence in connection with presenting forged documents. The investigation is being carried out by the Central Criminal Police.