Marge Tubalkain-Trell

A survey shows that 9 pct of Estonian entrepreneurs think that cartel agreements are common in their sphere of activities, Rein Lang, the Minister of Justice said, Eesti Päevaleht writes. Today the Minister introduced the directions of Estonian criminal policy to 2010 to the Parliament. He said that last year five competition crimes were registered, which is a very small number.

Approving a detail plan takes sometimes 9 years in Tallinn, while others are approved in less than a year. Such a difference gives favourable ground to corruption and unfair competition, Äripäev reports. There are two people behind an idea to put plans to ranking – Toomas Luman and Ivo Parbus. Latter of them, a Deputy Mayor, who is responsible for detail plans and an advisor to Taavi Aas, spent 6 months in prison. Allegedly one of his ‘tasks’ was lifting the files, in other words he was the man who speeded up approval of detail plans.

Tõnis Saarts, a political scientist said that Centre Party will likely talk of government’s activities with fighting the crisis, while Reform Party and Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL) will probably talk of Centre Party’s corruption scandals before local elections, ERR News reports. “Centre Party tries to focus on the economic crisis (in Tallinn). And here they have very good opportunities since governmental parties can’t show big success,” Saarts said. “Those parties, which try to ignore economic crisis completely and focus on other subjects are hardly doing well,” he said.