Legal proceedings Niko Ranta-aho tried to get the accused to speak in court according to his instructions – However, according to the law, “motivation” with drug offenses was not a crime

Katiska drug coil convicted as the second main factor, Niko Ranta-aho was released on Friday from his latest criminal charge. The Helsinki District Court dismissed Ranta-aho’s charge of threatening the person to be heard in court.

In addition to Ranta-aho, a woman who acted as her legal assistant and a close relative of Ranta-aho were charged with the same crime at the trial. They were also acquitted.

All three defendants denied the charges in court.

Now the dismissed charges were related to a large tangle of Katiska drugs.

In January – March 2020, Ranta-aho was suspected of financially threatening another man who had been charged with him in the Katiska drug trial in the Helsinki District Court.

Ranta-aho’s goal was to get the man to change his account of events in a way that is advantageous to Ranta-aho. At that point, Ranta-aho had not yet admitted to being the nickname Cobra, which ran a large-scale drug, drug and doping trade.

According to the prosecutors, the core content of Ranta-aho’s messages was that he would forgive the co-accused’s drug debts of 200,000 euros if he spoke in court at Ranta-aho’s instructions.

In addition, the co-defendant would also be taken care of in prison if he agreed to Ranta-aho’s proposal.

“If this were not done, the opposite would happen,” the prosecutor said Heikki Stenius characterized the prosecutors’ view of the content of the messages in court.

According to prosecutors, the legal counsel forwarded the messages from Ranta-kur to his close relative, who took the messages to the attention of the accused in the Katiska tangle.

At that time, Ranta-aho, who had been remanded in custody, could only have contacted his legal assistants due to communication restrictions.

Ranta-aho admitted in court that he had written messages to another accused and sought to influence his statements. Instead, he denied threatening the man in any way.

Neither the district court’s acquittal did not constitute a threat within the meaning of the law.

The messages received by the accused Ranta-aho did not, by law, refer to the use of violence, financial threat or any other unlawful means of coercion.

The district court pointed out that the promise to forgive the debt is not a negative thing from the debtor’s point of view but rather a reward.

“Nor is the demand for, or a reminder of, payment based on a debt relationship in the circumstances set forth to be regarded as an unlawful threat within the meaning of the Act,” the district court held in its judgment.

Read more: Niko Ranta-aho denied in court that he had threatened another accused in the Katiska tangle: “He still owes me more than 200,000 euros”

Helsinki in April 2021, the district court sentenced Niko Ranta-aho to 11 years in prison for a Katiska drug case. He later received two more years in prison for new crimes.

Treatment of Katiska drug coil began in the Helsinki Court of Appeal in mid-May. The Court of Appeal has reserved hearing days for the Katiska case until the end of October.