Meanwhile, the local court handed down a sentence to the former Orthodox hierarch.
The Finnish Immigration Service Migri made a record number of deportation decisions regarding foreigners living in Finland who were convicted of crimes last year, the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported on Friday.
169 individuals received deportation orders based on committed crimes, which is more than 30 percent higher than the figure for 2024.
The overwhelming majority of deportation decisions concerned men. The most deported nationalities were Iraqis, Estonians, and Russians.
Olli Koskipirtti, head of the deportation process at Migri, told Helsingin Sanomat that the reasons for the increase in deportations include, among other things, enhanced control over residence permits by Migri, as well as an amendment to the law that came into effect last year, which lowered the threshold for the expulsion of individuals who received international protection.
Meanwhile, the former archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Finland, Leo, also known as Leo Makkonen, was sentenced to a suspended prison term for fraud involving government subsidies and violation of accounting rules under aggravating circumstances. The former secretary of the society was also sentenced to a suspended term of the same duration.
The prosecutor demanded that the former archbishop be sentenced to one and a half years of probation and community service, while the secretary was to receive a sentence of one year and 10 months probation, including community service.
The ex-archbishop and the former secretary of the Karelian language society are required to jointly compensate the Ministry of Education for over 160,000 euros in damages caused by subsidy fraud. Additionally, the archbishop must personally pay the ministry over 9,000 euros as compensation.
The court costs of the ministry, exceeding 30,000 euros, will also be imposed on the convicted individuals.
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