State Digital Experts Master New Skills: How to Sell the Same System Six Times

Latvia's IT sector has taken a revolutionary step — finally someone has mastered the art of selling the same product six times to different state institutions. 21 people, including state officials, have been arrested for an organized scheme where ERDF funds worth 1.5 million euros ended up in the right pockets.

While fraudsters in Riga thought they were clever, Liepāja has long known — for that kind of money you could buy all of Pētera Street from one end to the other, and still have money left over for coffee beans. But as local pensioner Valdis says: "It would never occur to us here to commit fraud with IT systems — we're still trying to figure out how CD players work."

Particularly interesting is that EPPO points to potential national security risks, as the projects could affect elections. In Liepāja we laugh about that — here election results are determined by only one thing: which candidate promised to do more about the wind problem. Everything else is just details.

In the musical city, such fraud is called a "digital symphony in six parts," where each part costs 250 thousand but sounds the same. Meanwhile, 67 searches in Riga and the Riga region have uncovered more evidence than would ever be found in all of Liepāja's sandboxes combined. But we still prefer analog fraud — when the neighbor promises to help with garden work but goes to Ventspils instead.