In Finland they remembered the old story about Bottas’ girlfriend

The Finnish press unexpectedly recalled the events of almost four years ago, when Tiffany Cromwell, a friend of Valtteri Bottas, could have knowingly or unknowingly violated the Finnish border crossing rules in force during the pandemic.

In March 2020, a private plane landed at the capital’s Vantaa Airport, bringing a Formula 1 driver and his Australian girlfriend to Helsinki from Monaco.

The Finnish government had already imposed strict restrictions on all foreign citizens at that time due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and only Finnish passport holders and their family members were allowed to return from outside the country. Nevertheless, Cromwell managed to pass border control.

However, it later became known that the command received an anonymous letter through the internal channels of the Finnish Border Guard, the author of which reported a violation of professional ethics. He assured that Tiffany Cromwell had no legal grounds to cross the country’s border in that situation.

The Border Guard investigated the reasons for Cromwell’s exception, but according to documents cited by Helsingin Sanomat, neither Cromwell nor Bottas are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The bottom line is that in March 2020, a request about Cromwell was sent to the Finnish Border Guard through the airline FInavia and she was denied the right to cross the country’s border as an Australian citizen. However, the airline sent a secondary request, now addressed to the command of the Finnish Border Guards, and after some time the visit was agreed at the highest level.

However, this displeased the agents of the capital’s Border Guard Unit: the employees then working at Vantaa Airport were instructed from above that Cromwell was a member of the Valtteri Bottas family and therefore had the right to cross the border.

But it turned out that the border guards who worked at the airport at the time did not agree with this, in particular the team leader was sure that Cromwell should not have come to Finland under the restrictions in force at that time, because everyone is equal before the law . However, an order came from the border headquarters and she was allowed to enter the country, although foreign girlfriends and friends of other Finnish citizens were denied this during the same period.

The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat mentioned the representative of the border command who personally ordered Tiffany Cromwell to visit by telephone – it was Markku Hassinen, deputy commander of the country’s border guard. He now denies that he could have committed any violations.

According to the Finnish press, it was not possible to determine exactly whether Tiffany Cromwell had the right to cross the border from Finland or not, but the results of an internal investigation conducted by the Border Guard were sent to the Ministry of the Interior last weekend sent out of the country. fall. They gave the following assessment of this story: It is difficult to understand in detail what happened as the case mainly concerns oral information collected at different times and therefore no further action will be taken.