„I don't want to judge a person. I have heard that Mr Paukštys is a very religious man. I just know that such people have to understand that... That instance sees everything. And I would not like to comment anything more about Mr Paukštys. It is just that what he says, those insinuations are lies. I can say it straight – it is a lie,“ Šimonytė told journalists at the Seimas on Tuesday.
„I am a person of fact, and I can answer you the way it was. What is going on in someone's head is a shame, that's all,“ the Conservative added.
This is how Šimonytė reacted to the latest statements by Paukštys. On Monday, the founder of AGP Investments, a company of the Teltonika group, hinted at what he said were strange coincidences, suggesting that the former government had deliberately obstructed his business.
„I have both documents and email correspondence. If anyone ever needs to provide that information, I was informed every month about the progress of this cable project. It is probably not for nothing that, when a pre-trial investigation was opened, or some procedural action was taken by the authorities to see if anyone had put artificial obstacles in the way of Mr Paukštys, the decision was taken very quickly that there would be no investigation.
When I heard about it, I said that I was afraid that the investigation might inadvertently reveal that there was actually a very diligent effort to help Mr Paukštys quickly solve the problems of his energy networks,“ the former Prime Minister said.
„The amendments to the law that will be tabled in Parliament today were prepared by the Government and agreed very quickly. I cannot get inside other people's heads and guess why this is happening. But I can deny all this,“ she added.
„I don't know of any other projects that have been patronised in this way“
The outgoing Prime Minister continued to dismiss allegations by the founder of the Teltonika group that the former government may have deliberately put the cart before the horse in the development of the EUR 100 million project in Liepkalnis. According to her, the situation was the opposite.
„Not only was he not obstructed, but people were assigned to his project to develop it as fast as possible,“ the Conservative said.
„Now you believe what he says and don't hear what I say. I don't know of any other project that is being patronised in this way,“ she added.
According to the former Prime Minister, many of the problems that Paukštys started to discuss publicly in the autumn could have been solved simply by discussing them. Moreover, she pointed out that the infrastructure work needed to develop the project could also have been delayed due to the company's own design mistakes.
„I appealed to the Mayor of Vilnius to give more attention to this project. I appointed someone in my team who was responsible for the Teltonika project. The same people were also assigned to this project in the energy companies. Mr Paukštys chose to do the electricity cable project himself rather than Litgrid. As far as I know, about a quarter of the clients do this. There are two alternatives. Either you do it yourself because it saves time, or Litgrid does it, and then it takes a bit longer. Mr Paukštys chose the project himself, and he hired the contractor himself. Unfortunately, the project was prepared so that, to my knowledge, there were a lot of comments from the energy experts on that project. I have heard the figure 600. This means the project was not prepared to a very high standard,“ said Ms Šimonytė.
ELTA recalls that Arvydas Paukštys, the founder of AGP Investments, a Teltonika group company, announced in November that he was stopping the construction of the EUR 3.5 billion Teltonika High-Tech Hill Park in Liepkalnis because, according to him, the country lacks the electricity capacity necessary for the project, the change of land use has been delayed, and there have been other challenges in dealing with ministries and institutions responsible for them.
However, although he received the attention of the country's politicians and institutions and promised to solve the problems, he soon mentioned that all his projects „started to slow down“ after he financially supported the country's leader, Gitanas Nausėda, during his election campaign.
Later, when the former government tightened the export of dual-use goods by air to third countries, the founder of Teltonika spared no criticism of this decision. He did not rule out the possibility that the outgoing government had taken this decision based on personal considerations and in retaliation for the scandal that had erupted when information about the inability of the country's institutions to deal with bureaucratic problems had become public.
However, Teltonika itself was soon criticised in the public sphere, where it was reported that the company's products were still sold in Russia and Belarus. Paukštys denied this and later gave his view in an interview on the Politika.lt website. The businessman mentioned his meetings with the signatory Albinas Januška, the then members of the Seimas to develop relations with Taiwanese industry, and his refusal to support the initiative of Povilas Malakauskas and the priest Algirdas Toliatas. Although Paukštys neither confirmed nor denied when asked directly whether the former government had contributed to the challenges to his business, he believed that certain „coincidences“ made the situation more apparent.
