Riga court finalises 24-year and 25-year terms for Belarusian woman’s murder

The Riga Regional Court’s ruling in the case of a Belarusian citizen who was kidnapped and murdered in Saulkrasti in 2019 has taken effect, LSM reported. Two people convicted in the case received prison sentences of 24 and 25 years after the Supreme Court refused to open cassation proceedings.

The woman, who was born in 1979, disappeared in Saulkrasti on October 3, 2019. During an extensive investigation, law enforcement detained people suspected of involvement in the crime. Three Ukrainian citizens were also involved.

Investigators established that the woman had been kidnapped to obtain financial gain illegally. After the kidnappers’ plan failed, she was killed. Those involved also planned to defraud her of property worth more than 3.7 million euros using a forged power of attorney.

On May 29, 2024, the Riga District Court sentenced both people to 20 years in prison. It also ordered probation supervision and deportation from Latvia after they served their sentences, with reentry bans of seven years for one person and five years for the other.

The prosecutor appealed, seeking prison terms of 23 and 24 years. On August 29, 2025, the Riga Regional Court partly upheld the appeal and imposed even harsher sentences: 24 years in prison and three years of probation supervision for one person, and 25 years in prison and four years of probation supervision for the other.

Both people will also be deported from Latvia after serving their sentences and barred from reentering the country for eight years.

Aldis Lasmanis, a prosecutor in the Specially Authorised Prosecutors’ Division of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s Criminal Justice Department, said the case was one of the most complicated of his prosecutorial career. He said it was particularly significant that the murder was proven even though the victim’s body was never found.