The Chairman of the State Forensic Examination Committee Andrei Shved and the Chief of State Police of the Republic of Latvia Ints Kuzis signed the Agreement on cooperation in the field of forensic examination on October 4, 2018.

The document consolidated the existing cooperation and will allow developing new areas of interaction such as: coordination of scientific work on problems of forensic activity, joint development of methods and techniques, joint seminars, courses for the development of new methods and techniques for conducting examinations, training, retraining and advanced training of specialists in the field of forensic activity, exchange of specialists for internships, exchange of methodological and scientific literature and so on.

This is not the first visit of the Latvian side to the State Committee. Earlier experts from the State Forensic Science Bureau of the Latvian Police attended an International Scientific and Practical Conference, which was devoted to the 5th anniversary of the formation of the State Committee and was held on April 19-20, 2018 in Minsk. Then foreign colleagues noted the high level of conducting of forensic examinations by Belarusian experts, got acquainted with its activities and visited individual laboratories. Belarusian experts also paid a return visit to the State Forensic Science Bureau of the Latvian Police in May, 2018 – phonoscopists got acquainted with the activities of the expert Bureau, exchanged experience in the field of conducting of phonoscopic and linguistic examinations.

International cooperation of the State Committee with foreign colleagues contributes to the constant development of areas of expert activity that are demanded by law enforcement agencies and citizens.

So, the signed agreement will become a solid foundation for the exchange of experience with Latvian forensic experts. Belarusian experts are interested in studying the practice of conducting an author’s research, which is currently being conducted in the Republic of Latvia. Domestic forensic experts are working on the introduction of this type of examinations in their activities. The State Forensic Examination Committee is planning to start conducting authors’ researches in 2019 – 2020. During conduction of these examinations issues of confirmation or exclusion of authorship of a particular person, checking that the author of the entire text was the same person, as well as a number of diagnostic tasks – determining the personal characteristics of the author, such as educational level, native language, knowledge of foreign languages, origin, place of permanent residence, field of activity, profession, hobby, gender, age, social status, nationality and other social characteristics can be solved.

During the visit, representatives of the Police of the Republic of Latvia got acquainted with the collection of weapon and forensic records of the State Committee. They also visited drug research laboratories, petroleum product research, basic analysis, molecular spectral analysis with a demonstration of the capabilities of high-tech equipment used by Belarusian experts.

The Latvian side noted that one of their tasks is to study the positive experience of the State Forensic Examination Committee of the Republic of Belarus, which has united 5 years ago effectively and efficiently working expert units that previously functioned as part of various agencies. Currently, Latvia is working on the creation of a single expert body similar to the Belarusian one, whose model has proven its effectiveness in Belarus and whose success is noticeable abroad.

The meeting of the delegation was attended by the Chairman of the State Committee Andrei Shved and his Deputy Sergei Evmenenko.