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Delays in cases are often criticized by prosecutors, who are often criticized. The Panevėžys Regional Prosecutor’s Office referred a case to the court in which the former director of the Betono Base was accused of fraudulent accounting.
However, Concrete Base, which approached the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT) more than a year ago, saw much more serious misconduct that could not only cause significant harm to the company, but also jeopardize the environment.
The representatives of the Betono Base, which was transporting concrete to the Radioactive Waste Repository of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, expressed their concern that not only their products with all the necessary certificates could have entered this important facility.
They feared that a particularly important structure could not meet environmental requirements and pose a risk to the surrounding population, as unclear quality concrete could be used to install the radioactive waste repository. This substandard building material can account for up to two-thirds of the total amount of concrete used on the job.
Law enforcement agencies were informed that, under the guise of “Betono bazas”, the concrete, which may not have quality certificates, was supplied by another company, “Eurobetonas”.
The suspicions were confirmed: Panevėžys investigators and FNTT officials who carried out the investigation established that the concrete was supplied to the important object not only by the certified concrete base, but also by Eurobetones.
This company was founded in 2019. On June 17, the same day that the Betono Base and Eurovia Lietuva signed an agreement according to which the Betono Base undertook to supply a concrete mixture to the very low-level radioactive waste deposit of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.
Later it became clear that most of the concrete mix was transported to the radioactive waste dump not from the concrete base, but from the Eurobetones production site, mostly from the concrete base concrete trucks, possibly with the prior agreement of its drivers.
In addition to the concrete truck drivers, other Betono Base employees were used to supply Eurobeton to the nuclear power plant. However, the salary provided for in the employment contracts was paid by Concrete Base.
The latter’s lawyers pointed out that Eurobetonas and Betona Base had not signed any joint work contract.
Therefore, the lawyers were shocked by the prosecutor’s decision to send the case to court as soon as possible on a single charge. In his opinion, in the present case, all the circumstances surrounding the former manager’s conduct should be carefully examined.
There really was something to check: in his decision to terminate the pre-trial investigation, the prosecutor himself listed in detail the data collected during the pre-trial investigation, but supported them in the civil relations of the businessmen. Although at the same time the Prosecutor’s Office indicated that the concrete mix supplied to the important object had to meet all the requirements.
The hasty decision to hand over only a portion of the material collected by the investigators to the court has already been appealed by the Concrete Base to a higher prosecutor. This complaint was quick to reject.
The lead prosecutor was not persuaded by the argument that the fact that Concrete Base had not cooperated with Eurobeton and that the former manager had personally carried out transactions that were neither economic nor damaging to reputation could not be considered a normal civil legal relationship.
An unusual legal situation has arisen – in part of the material collected the prosecution saw the illegal actions of the former head of the “Concrete Base”, and in another part, although closely related to the first, it stubbornly denies them.
Another police investigation shows that concrete may not have been supplied to the Ignalina NPP in a completely transparent manner.
Officials had doubts not only about the quality of the concrete delivered to the radioactive waste dump, but also about its quantity, which could have been delivered less than indicated in official documents.
As a result, the Ekobana company, which worked at this facility, also caught the attention of officials. The FNTT has launched a pre-trial investigation into possible fraudulent accounting in order to conceal that less concrete than necessary for the works was delivered to the repository, Lietuvos Rytas writes.
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