The Relation between the Public Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice
Chapter II
The Relation between the Public Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice
The prosecution service structure, ranks and appointment
The prosecution service is a two-level institution divided into the Prosecutor General’s Office and the regional prosecutor’s offices, subordinated to it (Sect. 1 subs. 2 PSA). Hence, the prosecution service has a hierarchical structure. Recently, now the number of local prosecutor’s offices has been reduced from sixteen to four regional prosecutor’s offices, the rest will still remain subordinate offices. The four regional offices are located in Tallinn (covering the northern part), Tartu (for the southern part), Jõhvi (for the eastern part) and Pärnu (for the western part of Estonia).
This change was made in order to enable more specialisation among prosecutors and more efficient management. District units are subordinated to regional prosecutor’s offices, as they are, in principle, formed according to the jurisdictions of courts of appeal. One of the main changes is that prosecution will be presented both in the 1st and 2nd instance courts by prosecutors of regional prosecutor’s office (formerly only public prosecutors of the PGO participated in the hearings of the courts of appeal). This makes it possible that one prosecutor deals with the case from the beginning till the end (with the exception of the representation of the prosecution by a prosecutor of the PGO in the Supreme Court.
The prosecutors of the PGO are the Prosecutor General, leading public prosecutors and public prosecutors (Sect. 4 subs. 2 PSA). The prosecutors of the regional prosecutor’s offices are leading prosecutors, senior prosecutors, special prosecutors, prosecutors and assistant prosecutors (Sect. 5 subs. 2 PSA). The head of the prosecution service and the PGO is the Prosecutor-General (Riigipeaprokurör), the head of the section of the PGO is the leading public prosecutor (juhtiv riigiprokurör). The regional prosecutor’s offices are directed by leading prosecutors (juhtivprokurör) and the departments of regional prosecutor’s offices are directed by senior prosecutors (vanemprokurör).
In order to run as a candidate for the prosecutor’s post a person has to be an Estonian citizen with active legal capacity who has attained at least 21 years of age, has completed an academic higher education in law, is proficient in Estonian to the extent established by or pursuant to law, is of high moral character and has the necessary abilities and personal characteristics (Sect. 15 subs. 1 of PSA).
In Sect. 16 PSA deals with the appointment of public prosecutors. The Prosecutor-General is appointed to office by the Government of the Republic on the proposal of the Minister of Justice after considering the opinion of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu. The Minister of Justice appoints leading public prosecutors and leading prosecutors to office on the proposal of the Prosecutor. Senior prosecutors are appointed to office by the Prosecutor-General on the proposal of the leading prosecutor. The Minister of Justice shall appoint public prosecutors to office on the proposal of the prosecutors’ competition and evaluation committee. The Prosecutor-General appoints special prosecutors, prosecutors and assistant prosecutors to office on the proposal of the prosecutors’ competition and evaluation committee.
Till the coming into force of the new GDPS, specialisation in prosecution service was quite rare. It only occurred in the PGO, where one public prosecutor dealt with corruption only and one with international legal cooperation, and to the Tallinn prosecution service (one of the regional prosecutor’s offices) which has an economic crimes department.
According to Sects. 12-14 of GDPS there are four specialised departments in PGO: the first supervising the actions of the prosecutors in general, e.g. investigating crimes committed by prosecutors and analysing practice in general; the second dealing with corruption and economic crimes; the third with crimes related to narcotics and violent crimes and the fourth with international legal cooperation.
Specialisation within district prosecutor offices is yet left to be decided in accordance with a decree of the Minister of Justice (Sect. 21 subs. 2 of GDPS).
Prosecutor’s independence and guidelines
Section 2 subs. 2 of PSA declares that prosecutors are independent in the performance of their duties and act only pursuant to law and according to their conscience. The same regulation is given in Sect. 30 subs. 2 of CCP.
However, Sect. 10 of PSA grants the Prosecutor-General and leading prosecutors the right to substitute for prosecutors with good reason (right of substitution), or impose such obligation on another subordinate prosecutor (right of devolution). A substitution order shall be in writing, shall set out the extent to which one person substitutes another and shall justify the needs for substitution.
The right of substitution has been so far used only once when the Prosecutor-General took over the prosecution of the former Minister of Finance from a public prosecutor of the PGO and terminated the case on the basis that there were no grounds for further criminal proceedings. The right of devolution, on the other hand, is used quite frequently, as most of the criminal cases dealt by public prosecutors of the PGO are so to say transferred to them from local prosecutor’s offices when they meet the criteria of high public interest (this theme is further elaborated when the competence of the PGO is described).
The Minister of Justice exercises supervisory control over the prosecution service in general. The Prosecutor-General exercises supervisory control over the PGO and leading prosecutors over the regional prosecutor’s offices. Pursuant to the independence of the prosecutor, the supervisory control has no right to affect his or her independence and influence the decisions made by the prosecutor performing his functions in criminal procedures (Sect. 9 of PSA). This kind of control is like an internal audit that is carried out in order to find out how the prosecution service in total, and its units individually, have performed their functions (e.g. the length of proceedings and reasons for delays).
The Ministry of Justice does not have the right of substitution or devolution and may not intervene in concrete criminal cases. On the other hand, the Ministry of Justice is answerable before the Parliament for the prosecution policy in broad terms and besides that, there are no obstacles for the members of the Parliament to interrogate the Minister of Justice on concrete criminal cases in principle. Therefore, it may be said that the Minister of Justice has the highest authority. However, neither the PSA nor any other legal act grant him any rights to direct prosecution policy.
Section 3 subs. 1 PSA provides that the Prosecutor-General directs the prosecution service. However, the law does not specify what is meant under ‘directing’. In terms of criminal procedure, neither the CCP nor the PSA provides the Prosecutor-General with the right to give general guidelines and instructions. However, this right should come from the hierarchical structure of the prosecution service and the right to direct the prosecution service. Nevertheless, it would be better when such an authority were clearly stated in the law.
German experts analysing Estonian legislation on the prosecution service reached the same conclusion: ‘Herein by all means a limitation of Sect. 2 subs. 2 PSA can be seen: general guidelines and instructions can be released in order to guide the work of the prosecution service. Here in any case a legal clarification would be proper. Thereby no impression should emerge that the input requirements are released along with political tides. In that sense it is to be welcomed that this power has been limited to the Chief Public Prosecutor and that the Ministry of Justice can claim the right of initiative for itself only. Due to the independence of the prosecution service the guidelines may only be of a general nature and may not pertain to a single case’ (Feltes and Putzke, Organisational Analysis of the Estonian Criminal Justice System, Bochum 2003).
These kinds of general guidelines may also the result of cooperation between the prosecution service and the Ministry of Justice.
So far, the PGO has given guidelines merely in the form of a recommendation on how to interpret the substantive law or to solve procedural problems. Sometimes these have been elaborated by one public prosecutor only and hence their role in unifying practice can be doubted. E.g. the PGO gave a guideline how to interpret a norm of the special part of the Penal Code regulating the consumption of alcohol by a prisoner outside prison (e.g. during his or her leave) – is this act also punishable?
According to Sects. 11-13 of GDPS the departments of the PGO may give advice in their field of specialisation.
Prosecutor’s duties and powers
As mentioned above already, the prosecution service shall ensure the legality and efficiency of pre-trial proceedings and represent public prosecution in court (Sect. 30 subs. 1 of CCP). Section 211 subs. 2 imposes the duty to ascertain facts, vindicating or accusing the suspect or the accused, on the prosecution service.
The main function of the prosecution service is, of course, to decide whether to prosecute or not. The prosecution service has monopoly over this procedural decision. In using this monopoly the prosecutor has four options:
- To terminate the case on technical grounds (Sect. 200 CCP).
The technical grounds are: no grounds for criminal proceedings, the limitation period for the criminal offence has expired, amnesty precludes imposition of a punishment, the suspect or the accused is dead, the same person has been convicted on the same charges, or criminal proceedings have been terminated with regard to him or her (Sect. 199 CCP).
- To terminate the case for reasons of public interest (Sects. 201-205 CCP).
Reasons of public interest can be the age of the offender, lack of public interest in proceedings and in case of minor guilt, non-proportionality of punishment, concerning crimes committed by foreign citizens or in foreign states and crimes against the state mainly aimed at increasing the speed of the proceedings in minor crime cases and by doing so enabling dedication of more resources to prosecuting serious crimes.
Non-prosecution for the reasons of public interest (so-called opportunity principle) has two main forms: unconditional (Sect. 202 subs. 1 CCP) and conditional waiver of prosecution (Sect. 202 subs. 2 CCP). The use of non-prosecution in both forms is only possible concerning an offence in the second degree, in case of minor guilt and when the suspect or accused has indemnified, or has commenced to indemnify, the damage caused by the criminal offence and has paid the expenses relating to the criminal proceedings, or assumed the obligation to pay such expenses. Conditional waiver means that besides the above-mentioned requirements the following obligation may be imposed on the suspect or accused:
a. to pay the expenses relating to the criminal proceedings or compensate for the damage caused by the offence within the term specified by the prosecution service;
b. to pay a fixed amount into the public revenues to be used for specific purposes in the interest of the public; or
c. to perform 80 to 240 hours of community service.
Waiver of prosecution may be performed by the prosecutor on the permission of the judge or, in exceptional cases, by the prosecutor himself (offences in the second degree not prescribing the minimum sanction possible). When the judge has accepted non-prosecution the victim does not have a right to appeal this decision (Sect. 385 subs. 7 of CCP). The idea is that non-prosecution should enable to achieve procedural economy and therefore the victim’s right to appeal such decisions is not appropriate. The assumption is that in case of non-prosecution the prosecutor represents the public interest, hence also the interest of the victim.
When the prosecutor is allowed to use non-prosecution without permission of the judge the decision may be appealed to the PGO (Sect. 228 subs. 2 CCP) and finally to the pre-trial judge whose decision is final (Sect. 231 subs. 4 CCP).
- To use out of court settlements like speedy procedure (Sects. 233 – 238 CCP), plea bargaining (Sects. 239 –250 CCP) and Strafbefehl (Sects. 251 – 256 CCP).
The new CCP contains three types of so-called out of court settlements or simplified procedures with the aim to fasten criminal procedure by reducing the workload of overburdened courts. The goal is that in the future most of the cases will be solved out of court, and only in complex cases or in those having intense public interest, a trial would take place.
One type of the out of court settlements – plea bargaining – is not new to Estonian criminal procedure and has been used quite actively lately. In the year 2002 up to fifty per cent of all cases were solved by using plea bargaining, in some regions the per cent being as high as eighty per cent. Nevertheless, it is just one figure and does not show without a shadow of a doubt that the system has become more efficient. Grounds for suspicion lay in the fact that the overall number of cases solved annually has not increased that much. Hence, one may argue that plea bargaining is of benefit to the courts but whether the whole system benefits from it is yet hard to tell.
The regulation of Strafbefehl has been formed according to the German model. This type of procedure is allowed in offences having a pecuniary punishment as the sanction whilst at the same time the evidence about the offence is explicit.
Speedy procedure is executed only on the basis of the criminal file without summoning the witnesses or experts.
The common feature in all simplified procedures is that the prosecutor is the initiator and the judge has a passive role, deciding whether to agree with the proposed procedure or not.
- To present the prosecution in court (Sect. 226 CCP).
Guideline on the use of the opportunity principle
Regarding the opportunity principle PGO issued a recommendation in December 2003 that prosecution may be terminated based on that principle. According to the guideline it is not recommended to terminate prosecution in regard to the following crimes:
a. traffic crimes committed while being intoxicated;
b. crimes committed by civil servants and related to office (like corruption for example) in chapter 17 of the Penal Code;
c. when the perpetrator has already committed that type of crime within a year or when special preventive measure demand continuation of the criminal procedure.
Since January 1, 2004, the courts have already terminated criminal procedure on the request of the prosecutor in several cases and there has already been a violation of the recommendation of the guideline in one case (rules a, c).
This guideline also specifies what should be understood by ‘minor guilt’, what kind of duties should be imposed on the suspect and how to achieve the fulfilment of the duties. Besides that, the guidelines underline that the main responsibility for unified practice in using the opportunity principle lies on senior prosecutors (according to the new structure on leading prosecutors).
Regarding the legal significance of guidelines it has to be argued that they are at present of recommendatory value. Consequently, non-obedience of the guidelines does not result in disciplinary proceedings or any other responsibility.
The prosecution service usually obtains knowledge about crimes via the police who initiates a criminal procedure but it may also happen vice versa, and indeed the prosecutor may also initiate a criminal procedure and then send the file to the police for further investigation (Sect. 193 subs. 1 and 2 of CCP).
The Relation between the Public Prosecutor and the Minister of Justice
The prosecution service structure, ranks and appointment
The prosecution service is a two-level institution divided into the Prosecutor General’s Office and the regional prosecutor’s offices, subordinated to it (Sect. 1 subs. 2 PSA). Hence, the prosecution service has a hierarchical structure. Recently, now the number of local prosecutor’s offices has been reduced from sixteen to four regional prosecutor’s offices, the rest will still remain subordinate offices. The four regional offices are located in Tallinn (covering the northern part), Tartu (for the southern part), Jõhvi (for the eastern part) and Pärnu (for the western part of Estonia).
This change was made in order to enable more specialisation among prosecutors and more efficient management. District units are subordinated to regional prosecutor’s offices, as they are, in principle, formed according to the jurisdictions of courts of appeal. One of the main changes is that prosecution will be presented both in the 1st and 2nd instance courts by prosecutors of regional prosecutor’s office (formerly only public prosecutors of the PGO participated in the hearings of the courts of appeal). This makes it possible that one prosecutor deals with the case from the beginning till the end (with the exception of the representation of the prosecution by a prosecutor of the PGO in the Supreme Court.
The prosecutors of the PGO are the Prosecutor General, leading public prosecutors and public prosecutors (Sect. 4 subs. 2 PSA). The prosecutors of the regional prosecutor’s offices are leading prosecutors, senior prosecutors, special prosecutors, prosecutors and assistant prosecutors (Sect. 5 subs. 2 PSA). The head of the prosecution service and the PGO is the Prosecutor-General (Riigipeaprokurör), the head of the section of the PGO is the leading public prosecutor (juhtiv riigiprokurör). The regional prosecutor’s offices are directed by leading prosecutors (juhtivprokurör) and the departments of regional prosecutor’s offices are directed by senior prosecutors (vanemprokurör).
In order to run as a candidate for the prosecutor’s post a person has to be an Estonian citizen with active legal capacity who has attained at least 21 years of age, has completed an academic higher education in law, is proficient in Estonian to the extent established by or pursuant to law, is of high moral character and has the necessary abilities and personal characteristics (Sect. 15 subs. 1 of PSA).
In Sect. 16 PSA deals with the appointment of public prosecutors. The Prosecutor-General is appointed to office by the Government of the Republic on the proposal of the Minister of Justice after considering the opinion of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu. The Minister of Justice appoints leading public prosecutors and leading prosecutors to office on the proposal of the Prosecutor. Senior prosecutors are appointed to office by the Prosecutor-General on the proposal of the leading prosecutor. The Minister of Justice shall appoint public prosecutors to office on the proposal of the prosecutors’ competition and evaluation committee. The Prosecutor-General appoints special prosecutors, prosecutors and assistant prosecutors to office on the proposal of the prosecutors’ competition and evaluation committee.
Till the coming into force of the new GDPS, specialisation in prosecution service was quite rare. It only occurred in the PGO, where one public prosecutor dealt with corruption only and one with international legal cooperation, and to the Tallinn prosecution service (one of the regional prosecutor’s offices) which has an economic crimes department.
According to Sects. 12-14 of GDPS there are four specialised departments in PGO: the first supervising the actions of the prosecutors in general, e.g. investigating crimes committed by prosecutors and analysing practice in general; the second dealing with corruption and economic crimes; the third with crimes related to narcotics and violent crimes and the fourth with international legal cooperation.
Specialisation within district prosecutor offices is yet left to be decided in accordance with a decree of the Minister of Justice (Sect. 21 subs. 2 of GDPS).
Prosecutor’s independence and guidelines
Section 2 subs. 2 of PSA declares that prosecutors are independent in the performance of their duties and act only pursuant to law and according to their conscience. The same regulation is given in Sect. 30 subs. 2 of CCP.
However, Sect. 10 of PSA grants the Prosecutor-General and leading prosecutors the right to substitute for prosecutors with good reason (right of substitution), or impose such obligation on another subordinate prosecutor (right of devolution). A substitution order shall be in writing, shall set out the extent to which one person substitutes another and shall justify the needs for substitution.
The right of substitution has been so far used only once when the Prosecutor-General took over the prosecution of the former Minister of Finance from a public prosecutor of the PGO and terminated the case on the basis that there were no grounds for further criminal proceedings. The right of devolution, on the other hand, is used quite frequently, as most of the criminal cases dealt by public prosecutors of the PGO are so to say transferred to them from local prosecutor’s offices when they meet the criteria of high public interest (this theme is further elaborated when the competence of the PGO is described).
The Minister of Justice exercises supervisory control over the prosecution service in general. The Prosecutor-General exercises supervisory control over the PGO and leading prosecutors over the regional prosecutor’s offices. Pursuant to the independence of the prosecutor, the supervisory control has no right to affect his or her independence and influence the decisions made by the prosecutor performing his functions in criminal procedures (Sect. 9 of PSA). This kind of control is like an internal audit that is carried out in order to find out how the prosecution service in total, and its units individually, have performed their functions (e.g. the length of proceedings and reasons for delays).
The Ministry of Justice does not have the right of substitution or devolution and may not intervene in concrete criminal cases. On the other hand, the Ministry of Justice is answerable before the Parliament for the prosecution policy in broad terms and besides that, there are no obstacles for the members of the Parliament to interrogate the Minister of Justice on concrete criminal cases in principle. Therefore, it may be said that the Minister of Justice has the highest authority. However, neither the PSA nor any other legal act grant him any rights to direct prosecution policy.
Section 3 subs. 1 PSA provides that the Prosecutor-General directs the prosecution service. However, the law does not specify what is meant under ‘directing’. In terms of criminal procedure, neither the CCP nor the PSA provides the Prosecutor-General with the right to give general guidelines and instructions. However, this right should come from the hierarchical structure of the prosecution service and the right to direct the prosecution service. Nevertheless, it would be better when such an authority were clearly stated in the law.
German experts analysing Estonian legislation on the prosecution service reached the same conclusion: ‘Herein by all means a limitation of Sect. 2 subs. 2 PSA can be seen: general guidelines and instructions can be released in order to guide the work of the prosecution service. Here in any case a legal clarification would be proper. Thereby no impression should emerge that the input requirements are released along with political tides. In that sense it is to be welcomed that this power has been limited to the Chief Public Prosecutor and that the Ministry of Justice can claim the right of initiative for itself only. Due to the independence of the prosecution service the guidelines may only be of a general nature and may not pertain to a single case’ (Feltes and Putzke, Organisational Analysis of the Estonian Criminal Justice System, Bochum 2003).
These kinds of general guidelines may also the result of cooperation between the prosecution service and the Ministry of Justice.
So far, the PGO has given guidelines merely in the form of a recommendation on how to interpret the substantive law or to solve procedural problems. Sometimes these have been elaborated by one public prosecutor only and hence their role in unifying practice can be doubted. E.g. the PGO gave a guideline how to interpret a norm of the special part of the Penal Code regulating the consumption of alcohol by a prisoner outside prison (e.g. during his or her leave) – is this act also punishable?
According to Sects. 11-13 of GDPS the departments of the PGO may give advice in their field of specialisation.
Prosecutor’s duties and powers
As mentioned above already, the prosecution service shall ensure the legality and efficiency of pre-trial proceedings and represent public prosecution in court (Sect. 30 subs. 1 of CCP). Section 211 subs. 2 imposes the duty to ascertain facts, vindicating or accusing the suspect or the accused, on the prosecution service.
The main function of the prosecution service is, of course, to decide whether to prosecute or not. The prosecution service has monopoly over this procedural decision. In using this monopoly the prosecutor has four options:
- To terminate the case on technical grounds (Sect. 200 CCP).
The technical grounds are: no grounds for criminal proceedings, the limitation period for the criminal offence has expired, amnesty precludes imposition of a punishment, the suspect or the accused is dead, the same person has been convicted on the same charges, or criminal proceedings have been terminated with regard to him or her (Sect. 199 CCP).
- To terminate the case for reasons of public interest (Sects. 201-205 CCP).
Reasons of public interest can be the age of the offender, lack of public interest in proceedings and in case of minor guilt, non-proportionality of punishment, concerning crimes committed by foreign citizens or in foreign states and crimes against the state mainly aimed at increasing the speed of the proceedings in minor crime cases and by doing so enabling dedication of more resources to prosecuting serious crimes.
Non-prosecution for the reasons of public interest (so-called opportunity principle) has two main forms: unconditional (Sect. 202 subs. 1 CCP) and conditional waiver of prosecution (Sect. 202 subs. 2 CCP). The use of non-prosecution in both forms is only possible concerning an offence in the second degree, in case of minor guilt and when the suspect or accused has indemnified, or has commenced to indemnify, the damage caused by the criminal offence and has paid the expenses relating to the criminal proceedings, or assumed the obligation to pay such expenses. Conditional waiver means that besides the above-mentioned requirements the following obligation may be imposed on the suspect or accused:
a. to pay the expenses relating to the criminal proceedings or compensate for the damage caused by the offence within the term specified by the prosecution service;
b. to pay a fixed amount into the public revenues to be used for specific purposes in the interest of the public; or
c. to perform 80 to 240 hours of community service.
Waiver of prosecution may be performed by the prosecutor on the permission of the judge or, in exceptional cases, by the prosecutor himself (offences in the second degree not prescribing the minimum sanction possible). When the judge has accepted non-prosecution the victim does not have a right to appeal this decision (Sect. 385 subs. 7 of CCP). The idea is that non-prosecution should enable to achieve procedural economy and therefore the victim’s right to appeal such decisions is not appropriate. The assumption is that in case of non-prosecution the prosecutor represents the public interest, hence also the interest of the victim.
When the prosecutor is allowed to use non-prosecution without permission of the judge the decision may be appealed to the PGO (Sect. 228 subs. 2 CCP) and finally to the pre-trial judge whose decision is final (Sect. 231 subs. 4 CCP).
- To use out of court settlements like speedy procedure (Sects. 233 – 238 CCP), plea bargaining (Sects. 239 –250 CCP) and Strafbefehl (Sects. 251 – 256 CCP).
The new CCP contains three types of so-called out of court settlements or simplified procedures with the aim to fasten criminal procedure by reducing the workload of overburdened courts. The goal is that in the future most of the cases will be solved out of court, and only in complex cases or in those having intense public interest, a trial would take place.
One type of the out of court settlements – plea bargaining – is not new to Estonian criminal procedure and has been used quite actively lately. In the year 2002 up to fifty per cent of all cases were solved by using plea bargaining, in some regions the per cent being as high as eighty per cent. Nevertheless, it is just one figure and does not show without a shadow of a doubt that the system has become more efficient. Grounds for suspicion lay in the fact that the overall number of cases solved annually has not increased that much. Hence, one may argue that plea bargaining is of benefit to the courts but whether the whole system benefits from it is yet hard to tell.
The regulation of Strafbefehl has been formed according to the German model. This type of procedure is allowed in offences having a pecuniary punishment as the sanction whilst at the same time the evidence about the offence is explicit.
Speedy procedure is executed only on the basis of the criminal file without summoning the witnesses or experts.
The common feature in all simplified procedures is that the prosecutor is the initiator and the judge has a passive role, deciding whether to agree with the proposed procedure or not.
- To present the prosecution in court (Sect. 226 CCP).
Guideline on the use of the opportunity principle
Regarding the opportunity principle PGO issued a recommendation in December 2003 that prosecution may be terminated based on that principle. According to the guideline it is not recommended to terminate prosecution in regard to the following crimes:
a. traffic crimes committed while being intoxicated;
b. crimes committed by civil servants and related to office (like corruption for example) in chapter 17 of the Penal Code;
c. when the perpetrator has already committed that type of crime within a year or when special preventive measure demand continuation of the criminal procedure.
Since January 1, 2004, the courts have already terminated criminal procedure on the request of the prosecutor in several cases and there has already been a violation of the recommendation of the guideline in one case (rules a, c).
This guideline also specifies what should be understood by ‘minor guilt’, what kind of duties should be imposed on the suspect and how to achieve the fulfilment of the duties. Besides that, the guidelines underline that the main responsibility for unified practice in using the opportunity principle lies on senior prosecutors (according to the new structure on leading prosecutors).
Regarding the legal significance of guidelines it has to be argued that they are at present of recommendatory value. Consequently, non-obedience of the guidelines does not result in disciplinary proceedings or any other responsibility.
The prosecution service usually obtains knowledge about crimes via the police who initiates a criminal procedure but it may also happen vice versa, and indeed the prosecutor may also initiate a criminal procedure and then send the file to the police for further investigation (Sect. 193 subs. 1 and 2 of CCP).
