Court rejects Tõnis Rebbas’s compensation claim

Tallinn Administrative Court has rejected former state real estate company RKAS department head Tõnis Rebbas’s claim for 75,357.33 euros in damages from the Security Police Board and the Prosecutor’s Office, ERR reported.

Rebbas argued that the authorities’ disclosure of information about him to RKAS managers led to the end of his employment and caused financial, health and reputational harm. He also asked the court to rule that the disclosure of material and data gathered through surveillance during the pre-trial investigation was unlawful.

The court found that the prosecutor’s oral permission to share criminal case materials with RKAS managers was not unlawful. The prosecutor had authorised the disclosure to explain a possible corruption risk. The law does not require such permission to be in writing, the court said, but the permission, the person granting it and its content must be verifiable afterwards. An oral authorisation is not automatically unlawful, but makes that verification much harder.

The court also found that the Security Police Board’s disclosure was lawful in principle, despite some points of concern. It said the information shared was limited to extracts from work-related calls, not Rebbas’s private conversations. The agency is responsible for preventing and stopping corruption that threatens national security, while RKAS must ensure that people carrying out public duties meet their obligations.

The court said evidence did not show that the Security Police Board had pressured RKAS to end Rebbas’s employment. RKAS managers denied receiving such an instruction, and the agency’s documents contained no direct order to terminate his employment. The court added that the managers’ decision that the employment relationship could not continue did not itself make the prior disclosure unlawful.

The court also found no proven causal link between the authorities’ actions and the claimed loss. Rebbas’s employment ended by mutual agreement, and he had the legal right and opportunity to refuse that agreement. The court stressed that information of this kind should be disclosed only where there is a serious corruption risk and with reasonable formal procedures.