Finland Unnerved by Trial of Police Detective on Drug Charges
By DAN BILEFSKY and MARI-LEENA KUOSA

Members of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation were working to crack a drug smuggling ring, when they intercepted phone calls and text messages between a suspected supplier and buyer emanating from Pasila, a district of Helsinki.

One party to the communications, they suspected, was a notorious drug smuggler. The other they could not place. After months of more surveillance, prosecutors say, the officers were startled to discover that the mystery man appeared to be the head of the Helsinki police’s antidrug squad, a decorated officer, Jari Aarnio.

The discovery led to Mr. Aarnio’s arrest two years ago. Now, as details of the scandal pour out weekly from what Finland’s news media has called “the trial of the century,” the case is testing this otherwise orderly Nordic country’s once-solid confidence in its laws and institutions.

The deputy general prosecutor, Jorma Kalske, said in an interview that Mr. Aarnio, 58, a burly man once known as the Emperor among colleagues, used the lessons he gleaned in more than 30 years of fighting drug traffickers to become the leader of his own cartel. Mr. Kalske said Mr. Aarnio smuggled 10 million euros worth of hashish to Finland from the Netherlands.

The scandal is “serious and very embarrassing for us, because it concerns such a high-level police officer, and it has shaken our society,” Tomi Vuori, the acting National Police Commissioner, said.

Not only was the case exceptional in Europe, Mr. Vuori said, but it was particularly unnerving for a country like Finland, which is famed for its relative lack of corruption.

Last year, Transparency International, the Berlin-based organization that surveys perceptions of corruption, ranked Finland as the world’s third least corrupt country, behind New Zealand and Denmark.

In a nation that so prides itself on a culture of probity, the drug smuggling trial, which began in June, has been greeted with disbelief, spawning a media frenzy seldom seen at the modernist district court house in Helsinki.

After being arrested in November 2013 after a police raid at his home, Mr. Aarnio has spent the past year and a half in the same prisons where he once put away criminals.

Wearing a dark suit and rectangular glasses in court, Mr. Aarnio has steadfastly proclaimed that he is innocent and betrayed little emotion. He faces 13 years in prison on 30 charges, including drug-smuggling, forgery, abuse of public office, witness intimidation and obstruction of justice.

Mikko Majander, adjunct professor of political history at the University of Helsinki, said the Aarnio case was captivating Finns, who he said “did not trust politicians or journalists, but do trust the police.”

“People are amazed that what seems like fiction is fact,” he said. “We are not a country that has gunfights on the street or where the drug underworld is a part of daily life. It is a bit unreal, like having a television drama unfold before your eyes.”

True to more usual Finnish form, however, the case has already spawned changes to improve oversight of law enforcement. The Finnish national police board now requires that every police department in the country have a legal unit with the task of ensuring that police officers themselves cannot breach the law.

Still, as the Aarnio case has demonstrated, “No system is watertight,” Mr. Vuori said.

At the core of the case, prosecutors say, is the accusation that while he was the chief detective of Helsinki’s antidrug unit, Mr. Aarnio arranged for six giant drums of hashish to be imported from the Netherlands to Finland from 2010 to 2013. Mr. Aarnio claims he was working undercover.

Law enforcement officials say they found a cellphone, hidden in a shoe in his garage, that had been used for many of the conversations they had monitored, along with unsent handwritten notes advising the smuggler on how to deflect criminal charges.

The notes, prosecutors say, were intended for Keijo Vilhunen, whom the authorities say was a leading figure of the United Brotherhood, the country’s most dangerous criminal organization, and, they suspect, the other party to many of the conversations they had monitored.

Mr. Vilhunen, who has been charged with drug smuggling, witness intimidation and forgery of evidence, has denied the charges and that he is the leader of the gang.

Investigators say Mr. Aarnio used his position in law enforcement and his accumulated knowledge of policing to try to throw his colleagues off his tracks and to conceal evidence.

In December 2011, after the Dutch police seized a drum with 311 pounds of hashish, they sent it on to its manifest destination in Finland, in hopes of catching the smugglers. Informed of the attempted sting, Mr. Aarnio tipped off his subordinates in the ring not to accept the shipment, prosecutors say.

One associate, Peter-Mikael Fagerholm, called the Fisherman, ignored his warning, and was arrested and sentenced to nine years in jail on drug smuggling charges.

After Mr. Fagerholm decided to testify against Mr. Aarnio in hopes of a lighter sentence, prosecutors say, Mr. Aarnio sent two members of a drug gang to threaten Mr. Fagerholm’s lawyer, telling him that his client’s family would be targeted if Mr. Fagerholm did not recant his statements to the police.

Mr. Aarnio also tried to scare him by transferring a dangerous former gang member to a cell adjacent to Mr. Fagerholm, prosecutors say.

Investigators say Mr. Aarnio implicated himself further when, while in prison, he asked a police officer to tell his wife to put some “garden chips” under a bush at his home.

When the police raided his house, they discovered nearly €65,000 hidden in the dirt. According to the indictment, he also had a long relationship with a prostitute called Saara, and stole €14,000 that she had given to him for safekeeping.

In total, Mr. Aarnio, who owned eight cars, including an Audi and BMW, was estimated to have accumulated €500,000 in cash.

Prosecutors say Mr. Aarnio expertly concealed his involvement in the crimes by structuring his cartel in a way that subordinates did not know or communicate with one another.

Mr. Aarnio has denied any wrongdoing, saying that fictitious drug deals were routinely made to entrap criminals. He told the court he changed SIM cards and phones often for security reasons.

“We are trained that in undercover operations everything possible must be done anonymously,” he told the court, calling the prosecutor’s accusations a “fiction.” His lawyer, Riitta Leppiniemi, has argued from the onset that the prosecution’s case is thin and built on circumstantial evidence.

Already, however, Mr. Aarnio has been convicted of abuse of public office and accepting bribes and sentenced to nearly two years in prison.

Mr. Aarnio’s evolution from cop to criminal has its roots in Maunula, a working-class suburb of Helsinki, where he grew up surrounded by drug addicts. During his police studies, he researched drug cartel structures.

In an interview on Finnish public television in 2000, Mr. Aarnio emphasized that effective drug organizations were constructed in such a way as to ensure that there was no evidence against the “real leader,” who can “hide behind a fall guy.”

An effective drug cartel, he added, was like a chess game where the pawns protect the king.

芬蘭廉潔破功 30餘年「緝毒皇帝」是毒梟

芬蘭人向來以廉潔文化自豪，因此芬蘭緝毒皇帝奧尼歐變成毒梟的案件揭露時，全國為之震驚。今年6月，這名赫爾辛基警局前緝毒組長的案件開始審判時，媒體稱它為「世紀審判」，但奧尼歐迄今否認犯案。

紐約時報報導，檢方指出，2013年，芬蘭國家調查局幹員監聽毒品買賣雙方電話與攔截手機訊息時，懷疑一方是芬蘭最危險犯罪組織「團結兄弟」的首腦、惡名昭彰毒品走私犯維胡南，另一方則是個神秘人物。經過數月監控，警方赫然發現，神秘人物竟是58歲，屢獲褒揚的奧尼歐。

壯碩的奧尼歐是同事口中的「皇帝」，緝毒卅餘年。根據副總檢察長卡斯基，奧尼歐從荷蘭走私價值一千萬歐元（約台幣三億四千萬元）的大麻至芬蘭。警方在他家中車庫一只鞋中找到警方一直在監聽的一支手機，以及他建議維胡南如何脫罪，但未送出的手寫紙條。

代理國家警察局長烏歐里說，案件不僅在歐洲十分例外，在貪汙醜聞極少的芬蘭更令人震驚。國際透明組織去年調查貪腐觀感時，芬蘭的排名在全球倒數第三，僅在紐西蘭、丹麥之前。

因此，案件6月開審時，赫爾辛基法院出現大批媒體，也成罕見現象之一。赫爾辛基大學政治史副教授麥彥德爾說，案件特別引芬蘭人注目，芬蘭人可能「不信任政治人物、記者，但相信警察」。

奧尼歐被控卅項罪名 ，可能遭判刑13年，罪名包括走私毒品、偽造、濫用職權、恐嚇、妨礙司法等。

案件已讓芬蘭從事改革，提高對執法單位的監督。現下芬蘭每一警局均須設置確保警察不違法的一個專責單位。但奧尼歐的案件證明很難做到滴水不漏，他一再利用職務，誤導警方辦案。

2010至2013年，奧尼歐從荷蘭進口六桶大麻至芬蘭。2011年荷蘭查獲一桶大麻，決定不打草驚蛇，仍將它運至芬蘭的目的地。奧尼歐得知警方的秘密行動後，通知他的販毒集團勿領貨，但一名同夥未理會而被捕。同夥決定當汙點證人揪出奧尼歐時，還遭奧尼歐恐嚇取他家人性命。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/world/europe/finland-police-detective-jari-aarnio-drug-smuggling-charges.html

2015-08-04．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯王麗娟