Finland

National Member

Lilja Limingoja was appointed National Member for Finland on 1 August 2019. Prior to her appointment, she served as Assistant to the National Member for Finland. Before coming to Eurojust, Ms Limingoja worked as a district prosecutor, specialised in economic crime, since 2003. She has also been a member of a group of prosecutors responsible for training economic crime investigators, customs officers, tax officers, attorneys, judges and prosecutors. Ms Limingoja worked as Seconded National Expert at Eurojust from February until July 2014 and served as Contact Point for the European Judicial Network prior her appointment as National Member.

Deputy National Member

Ritva Sahavirta is Deputy National Member for Finland. She worked as National Member for Finland from August 2008 until July 2011. Prior to her appointments at Eurojust, Ms Sahavirta worked as a state prosecutor for 10 years in the Office of the Prosecutor General in Helsinki, specialising in financial crimes. Her special interest is in tax fraud and money laundering cases. Before she was appointed state prosecutor, she worked as a district prosecutor for four years and served in the Tax Administration for several years. Ms Sahavirta is currently responsible state prosecutor for the specialisation area of financial crime.

Interview with National Member Lilja Limingoja

What strikes you most about working at Eurojust?

It is a unique working place, with people from all the Member States. They partly have the same background because of their professions, but these backgrounds also vary a little, because they come from different countries. I think what strikes me most about Eurojust is that everybody is so engaged to work on the issues and tasks that confront the organisation.

Could you describe a case that you have supported and which had a particularly successful outcome?

This is difficult because I only joined Eurojust in August of 2019. However, there was an ongoing case involving money laundering that I was partly involved in. In 2018, an organised crime group was selling non-existent luxury goods on fake online trading platforms. They used bank accounts in Ireland and Finland to receive the money and then withdrew it from cashpoints in different European countries.

With Eurojust’s help, Finland and Ireland set up coordination meetings. They agreed on a prosecutorial strategy and issued mutual legal assistance requests. In the end, three of the criminals were convicted in Finland for money laundering and another nine were arrested in Ireland. The authorities in Finland and Ireland also seized equipment for document forgery, laptops and cash.

Which of the services and tools available through Eurojust do you consider most important for national judicial authorities – and why?

I would say the coordination meetings and coordination centres. They offer the kind of assistance that cannot be provided otherwise. The coordination meetings and coordination centres and related action days are crucial to agree on different kinds of actions, investigations and prosecutions in different countries, especially when there are parallel investigations. These meetings also allow you to build trust, and people attending understand that they are all there working towards the same goal.