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Washington (dpa) - Former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar has been awarded the Friedman Prize for Liberty for engineering an economic transformation in the Baltic nation during his tenure, the US Cato Institute announced Thursday.
The prize comes with 500,000 dollars and will be presented to Laar at a ceremony in Chicago on May 18.
The biannual award is named after the economist Milton Freedman, and is given to individuals who have "made a significant contribution to advancing human freedom," the Cato Institute said in a statement.
Mart Laar was prime minister of Estonia from 1992 to 1995 and 1999 to 2002. During his first tenure, he introduced Europe's first flat tax in the country and has been credited with revitalising the economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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