One of the clients of the law office RER Lextal applied to the Constitutional court of the Republic of Latvia, contesting the conformity of the 3rd part of the Article 631 of the Criminal Procedure Law to the 1st sentence of the 92nd Article of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia and asking to stay the proceedings and to turn to the Court of Justice of the European Union with preliminary questions. The Constitutional court of the Republic of Latvia instituted proceedings “About the conformity of the part 3 of the Article 631 of the Criminal Procedure Law to the 1st sentence of the Article 92 of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia”. In this case there is doubt about the conformity of the national regulation to the legal provisions of the European Union, therefore the Constitutional court of the Republic of Latvia has made a decision to turn to the European Court of Justice with preliminary questions.

The other client, in turn, applied to the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Latvia contesting the conformity of the 6th part of the Article 124, 3rd part of the Article 125 and 3.1 part of the Article 126 of the Criminal Procedure Law to the first and second sentences of the 92nd Article of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia. Also in this case, the Constitutional court of the Republic of Latvia decided to turn to the European Court of Justice with preliminary questions.

Both cases are related to a process of Criminally Acquired Property.

With the Article 267 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union a cooperation procedure has been established, in which the European Union Court of Justice provides a useful answer, which would aloe to solve the particular constitutional complaint.

The legal proceedings in the Constitutional court of the Republic of Latvia cases have been suspended until the moment when the ruling of the European Court of Justice comes into force.