Lithuania’s state-owned railway company Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (LTG) risks falling under US sanctions as it continues to transport Belarusian fertilizers, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte has warned.
She was commenting on LTG’s statement that it had received an official confirmation from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) that Washington’s sanctions against Belaruskali, one of the world’s largest potash fertilizer producers and exporters, were not binding on the Lithuanian company.
“LTG failed to highlight the paragraph where it was clearly written that OFAC could not guarantee that LTG would not be included in the list of sanctioned entities,” the prime minister told reporters on December 21.
“Entities that assist, support, broker or otherwise participate directly in the business practices of sanctioned entities may be included in the list of such entities based, as it is mentioned in the OFAC letter, in the US national security interests,” she added.
According to Simonyte, US government agencies can make the decision to sanction LTG without an approval from the US Congress.
The risk of LTG being sanctioned “is clearly stated in the OFAC letter, which means that the company has at least a reputational risk due to its involvement in this deal”, she said.
Belaruskali product shipments via Lithuania did not stop after US sanctions came into force on December 8, because the Belarusian company had made an advance payment to LTG to cover the cost of rail services for several months. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
