RIGA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The Greens and Farmers Union, the leading partner in Latvia's tripartite center-right government coalition, has been caught accepting illicit donations, the Latvian Corruption Prevention Bureau, which scrutinized political parties' finances, said on Tuesday.
While examining the political parties' reports for 2016, the anti-corruption bureau discovered three illicit donations, worth 33,224 euros (39,447 U.S. dollars) in total. Two of them had been made to the Greens and Farmers Union and one to the Action Party, which is not represented in the Latvian parliament.
The Corruption Prevention Bureau's chief Jekabs Straume has ordered the Greens and Farmers Union to pay 17,880 euros worth of illegal donations into the state budget and the Action Party will have to repay 15,000 euros it had received in an illegal donation.
Representatives of the anti-corruption bureau said that the Greens and Farmers Union had already paid the money into the state budget.
The examination of the Latvian political parties' finances also revealed various administrative violations. In 23 cases, parties were fined for these violations, the Corruption Prevention Bureau informed.
In 2016, six political parties in Latvia received public funding worth 576,980 euros in total. Public funding was suspended for the center-right Unity party for breaching party financing rules.
