Lithuania’s Ministry of Defence was going to buy possibly Russia-made equipment for NATO fighter jets, but cancelled the purchase after the media became interested in the acquisition.
Last year, the Defence Ministry announced a tender and selected the winning bidder, Baltijos Tiekimas, from which it planned to buy mobile voltage frequency converters. The successful bidder offered products from the Estonian company Estel, but the equipment could reportedly have been manufactured at a Moscow factory.
Ilanas Ostrovskis, a lawyer for Kaunas-based Elektros Zona, which came second in the tender, was suspicious that the price of the inverters offered by Baltic Supply was too low, a third lower than the other offers. Moreover, the lawyer said he had found out that Estel of Estonia was part of the Russian factory Liuberetskiy Zavod Montazhavtomatika (LZMA).
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Estel officially declared in the Estonian Register of Companies that Russia and Belarus would be the company’s main target markets this year. Among the major ongoing and completed projects are the supply of equipment to various Russian airports and to the Russian and Belarusian state-owned airlines Aeroflot and Belavia.
Elektros Zona, represented by Ostrovskis, filed a lawsuit against the procurement with the Siauliai Regional Court and demanded that the results of the tender for the purchase of converters be annulled on the grounds of threats to national security.
The court dismissed the action. At the time, the Court of Appeals stated in its ruling that Baltijos Tiekimas had informed that “members of Estel’s corporate bodies do not have any permanent links with Russia, their personal social, economic and financial ties are not linked to Russia, and the company’s equipment is not manufactured in Russia”.
As the media began to take an interest in the procurement, the Ministry of Defence announced that it was suspending the procedures, and the Air Force Armament Repair Depot said that the results of the tender would be cancelled. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
