Suspicions brought against Lithuania’s MG Baltic concern

“Yes. Suspicions have been brought against the concern,” Urbanavičius told BNS on Tuesday.

“Today officers of the Special Investigation Service brought bribery and influence peddling suspicions against a legal entity – one of the largest concerns in Lithuania. The pre-trial investigation in the case of political corruption revealed sufficient factual data for reasonable suspicions that the legal entity committed criminal deeds – influence peddling and bribery,” the SIS said in a press release.

Last year, Lithuanian law-enforcement opened a probe into influence peddling and bribery. In the case, the Liberal Movement‘s former leader Eligijus Masiulis is suspected of taking a bribe of over 100,000 euros from MG Baltic vice-president Raimondas Kurlianskis for the political party’s operations for the benefit of the business group. The Special Investigation Service also said it suspected Kurlianskis of attempted bribery of the Labor Party via its member Vytautas Gapšys into working for the concern’s benefit.

In the course of the investigation, other top executives of the concern were questioned. In late August of 2016, the authorities interviewed board member Romanas Raulynaitis, while Mockus, the concern’s president, was questioned as special witness at the beginning of September.

In Lithuania, a person is listed as special witness when he is questioned about his actions but there are no sufficient grounds for suspicions against him.

Kurlianskis used to meet with Dainoras Bradauskas, former head of the State Tax Inspectorate, in 2015. Bradauskas was dismissed from office in January amid suspicions of leaking information about tax checks of MG Baltic and Vilniaus Prekyba group.

MG Baltic, which posts revenue of over 500,000 euros per year, is one of Lithuania’s largest groups operating alcohol, media, real estate, clothing retail, construction, logistics, information technologies and telecommunications businesses. In 2015, its revenue from sales totaled at 539 million euros, while net profits stood at 22.333 million euros, up by 66.1 percent from the year before.