British stag parties are falling victim to drugging and robbery in the Latvian capital.

A stag party of 15 Britons who spent a weekend in Riga last month told Times Online that three of their party were the victim of credit card fraud and one of them believes he was drugged before being robbed. They also claim to have met a second stag party who told of similar experiences.

Luke Stewart, the London accountant who organised the Riga stag trip told Times Online: “When one of our party went missing one night and still hadn’t appeared at midday we asked the receptionists at our hotel, the Monte Cristo, to call the police. They were helpful but told us not to get the police involved because they would try to get money off us and would always side with Latvians.

“So we went looking for him on foot and found him in a park on a bench. He was disorientated and his pupils were dilated – he thinks he was drugged. He had recollections of suddenly feeling very drunk in the club and going out for some fresh air, then was taken by a group of men to a cash machine and forced to withdraw money. It was six hours before he was feeling normal again.”

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The incident is not the first – Stewart’s party met an Irish stag party in Riga who claims one of their group was drugged and taken to their hotel and “cleaned out” of all of their valuables, including mobile phones, wallets and MP3 players.

Commenting on the incident, a spokeswoman for the Latvia Tourist Board told Times Online: “There has been a backlash against stag parties in Riga. But these are extreme examples and I wouldn’t say Riga was any more dangerous than other European cities.”

She added: “You might have had bad experiences with the Latvian police some time ago but in this case they should have contacted the police first. They could have complained afterwards if they felt the police had dealt with them in an inappropriate manner.”

Stewart says he was braced for trouble after reading about similar incidences in Riga. He was so concerned by negative comments on Tripadvisor forums that he issued the party with a list of do’s and don’ts, such as avoiding all but two nightclubs, not to go into clubs with two or more bouncers, and not to use credit cards.

One commentator on the Tripadvisor Riga Forum, who calls himself StagTakeCare from Lancashire, corroborates Stewart’s concerns: “The love/hate relationship that Riga has with stag parties is obvious. They absolutely hate us but love our money and are perfectly happy to use any method necessary to get it.”

Riga is a hot topic on the site’s forums, with as many positive comments on the city as the negative ones.

Among the commentators defending Riga on Tripadvisor’s is a Riga resident who goes by the user name angli4anin: “Riga was a lovely, charming and welcoming city here too before the stags started arriving in 2005.”

In response to complaints from visitors to Riga last year, the tourist board launched a hotline for tourists to report problems. A tourism board spokeswoman told Times Online: “We used to have a lot of complaints on the hotline of people being conned, but it is improving.

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