Ähtäri cannot face criminal liability over missing panda records
Thursday 1st October 2026 on 11:00 in
Finland
The plans and financial calculations behind the panda project in Ähtäri, a Finnish city, have disappeared, but any possible criminal offences connected to their concealment are likely time-barred, Yle reports.
The missing documents were prepared and presented between 2014 and 2016 as the city and its zoo company planned to bring pandas to the zoo. The calculations concerned a project worth millions, and experts say documents that influenced public decisions should have been archived.
The calculations belonged to a company owned by the city and may have contained trade secrets. Kirsi Lamberg, a lawyer with the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, said company documents are not covered by the Act on the Openness of Government Activities unless they have been provided to the municipality, for example, as part of its owner guidance.
However, the city was the zoo company’s owner and supported it financially, including through loans and loan guarantees. The city also sought to guarantee a loan worth millions of euros for the panda house, but Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court later overturned the guarantee because it involved significant financial risk.
The costs and construction plan were presented to city councillors at an informal evening meeting in August 2016. The city council formally approved the panda house project the following month. The documents setting out the project’s grounds should have been attached to the meeting minutes, but they are not held in the city archive.
Public law professor Tomi Voutilainen of the University of Eastern Finland said confidentiality must be based on law and should be applied narrowly. Documents that affected a public body’s decision-making should be included with the minutes and archived, he said. Trade secrets must be kept confidential, while public information must be provided when requested.
Yle’s summary says deliberate destruction of the records could constitute an offence, but any possible breach of official duties is likely to have expired under the statute of limitations.