Chancellor of Justice Tuomas Pöysti has criticised senior management members at the foreign ministry for attempting to transfer the head of consular affairs Pasi Tuominen to another position, according to a report by news agency STT.
In the autumn of 2019, following disagreements within the ministry over the repatriation of Finnish citizens from the al-Hol displacement camp in northern Syria, foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (Green) requested that Tuominen be transferred to a new post.
The dispute led to a split within the foreign ministry, and engulfed Haavisto in a political crisis.
Pöysti said that he had no reason to suspect that a crime had been committed, but noted the ministry's secretary of state and under-secretary of state would have been justified in clarifying the transfer's legality, according to the Foreign Service Act as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.
The justice chancellor has previously stated that the way Parliament deals with legal questions surrounding the actions of ministers' needs clarification.