Latvian MP robbed near Origo in Riga, police failed to come, colleagues say

A member of the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, was robbed in a tunnel near the Origo shopping centre in central Riga and the police never came to the scene, her fellow MP Rūdolfs Brēmanis said in a video posted on Facebook. The news websites Jauns.lv and LA.LV reported his claims on the evening of 12 November.

Brēmanis said a group of people surrounded the MP on a staircase, snatched her bag with her wallet and ran off. When she called the police without mentioning that she was an MP, she was advised not to wait and not to file a report, he said. He also said police officers told her such things happened regularly at that spot and were nothing special.

Colleague names the victim

Brēmanis did not name the MP. Artūrs Klēbahs, an MP from the Sovereign Power / Union of Young Latvians list, said in a TikTok video that she was Gita Plaude, his colleague from the same list. According to Klēbahs, several young people stopped around her, snatched her bag and wallet, took the cash and ran away. The wallet was later found discarded.

Klēbahs called the situation “tragicomic” and “tragic for residents”. He said officers had laughed about what happened and refused to come to the scene even after a second call.

No police account yet

All details of the incident so far come only from the two politicians’ public videos. An official comment from the State Police was not available when LA.LV published its report, and by the afternoon of 13 November the police had published nothing about the case on their website. What happened and how the officers acted has not been independently confirmed.