According to a news report on the commercial television network Nelonen, suspicions of criminal action by Helsinki's drug police involve at least one case of warning criminals of an impending investigation.
About ten members of the Helsinki drug squad currently face charges of using illegal means of acquiring information about the illegal drug market.
According to the story aired on Sunday, the police officers in question are suspected of having warned an Estonian criminal of a wiretap in 2006.
Nelonen reported that a phone call informing the criminal of the planned surveillance was recorded on tape, because the Estonian police were already listening in on the suspect's telephone.
Nelonen says that the police have denied giving the criminal any such warning.
The police are also suspected of having supplied false information to Helsinki District Court when applying for a wiretap warrant for an Estonian man's telephone: the warrant was allegedly requested for the telephone of an unknown person, although the user of the telephone was well known to the police.
In another case, the police are believed to have soft-pedalled an investigation into the activities of a Finnish criminal in 2001 and 2003, because the person in question was a useful police informer.
The police deny the accusation, noting that the man's telephone had been tapped for a period of 11 months.
In a third case, the police are accused of apprehending a drug smuggler prematurely in 2001. If they had waited, the police could have caught the recipient of the delivery.
The police say that they had no knowledge of the recipient of the shipment.
