Latvija’s Tilti CEO suspected of bribing Klaipėda port official for multi-million contracts

Genadijs Kamkalovs, board chairman of Latvia’s largest road and bridge construction company Latvijas Tilti, is suspected of having paid a bribe to the head of the Lithuanian Klaipėda port’s director for infrastructure, Gediminas Zumaras, for decisions that would bring financial benefit to the company.

The Lithuanian Special Investigation Service said that Genadijs Kamkalovs, board chairman of Latvijas Tilti, could have paid a bribe to Gediminas Zumaras, director for infrastructure at the Klaipėda port.

The investigation is conducted in cooperation with the Latvian anti-corruption agency KNAB. Kamkalovs and Zumaras were detained on Thursday in the framework of the probe, SIS agents also searched the Klaipėda port’s directorate offices.

A simultaneous operation and other procedural actions took place in Latvia. KNAB detained six individuals holding high posts in one of Latvia’s biggest companies and conducted about 20 searches, seizing documents and more than €100,000 in cash, Lithuania’s Special Investigation Service said. No identities or company names have been disclosed.

Lithuania’s Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius, currently on a visit in Klaipėda, told journalists on Friday that the investigators had also raided the office of Klaipėda port CEO Arvydas Vaitkus on Thursday.

Latvijas Tilti has won a number of contracts at the Lithuanian port of Klaipėda. Together with Borta construction company of the Lithuanian Kaminera group, it recently secured a €11.7 million contract to deepen the Malku bay, while the consortium of BMGS and Lithuania’s Hidrostatyba should reconstruct the embankments of Bega stevedoring company for €14.952 million.

Furthermore, Latvijas Tilti built the embankment of the passenger terminal at the Klaipėda port in 2013 for €32.36 million.