Prime Minister Alexander Stubb’s aides told Yle that neither the president nor other high ranking personnel knew of the missile components bust, and instead discovered the chain of events through public news channels.
President Sauli Niinistö also went on record at Yle to say he was astonished that the information did not reach him directly.
Director of Investigations Sami Rakshit said that Customs relayed the information on the missile container from Vietnam “according to normal procedures” to the cabinet. However, the cabinet says that the first they heard of the situation was on Tuesday last week.
“We have communicated the situation to the cabinet's command centre in a separate release,” Rakshit told Yle. “They then relay the information forward according to their protocols.”
Daily Helsingin Sanomat reports that the cabinet received the Customs release on Tuesday, but did not send it forward to the president or the Foreign Minister's office because it did not consider it "very usable".
Rakshit also says that the special adviser of Minister Paula Risikko, who is in charge of customs-related issues, was informed of the interception. Helsingin Sanomat said that she was "aware on a general level" of a weapons-related interception at Helsinki-Vantaa. Risikko also said that she was told that the cabinet had informed high command about the situation.
Rakshit said he believed that Defence Minister Carl Haglund had received the announcement, because Defence Forces experts investigated the weapons shipment.
But Haglund’s assistant also denies that the Minister was aware of the events until the news reached him on Friday last week.
Previous communication mess airspace-related
The internal communication of the highest echelon last came under scrutiny during spring, when Russian planes allegedly violated Finnish airspace.
Due to human error, then-PM Jyrki Katainen was misinformed about the sequence of events at the time, Helsingin Sanomat said.
Edit: The article was updated to specify the chain of events and to clarify the terminology used.