No confidence in airport chief

  • 2012-10-17
  • From wire reports

Arnis Luhse: no longer trusted.

RIGA - Non-party Transport Minister Aivis Ronis expressed his distrust of the Chairman of Riga International Airport Arnis Luhse during a meeting of TM shareholders on October 12 Luhse was appointed to his post with the blessing of the Greens & Farmers.

It is expected that an airport shareholders meeting will be called shortly. This meeting will decide Luhse’s and some other Board member’s fate in the company, pietiek.com reports.
The portal could not get an official confirmation from Ronis – he keeps silent in regard to this particular issue. TM State Secretary Anrijs Matiss confirmed that an open statement of distrust was voiced in relation to Luhse during the Friday morning meeting. It is not planned to replace some other Board members at this moment. Matiss did not specify the date of the expected meeting. The fact that the minister openly expressed distrust could mean he will lose his post, Luhse confirmed during a short phone conversation. He declined to give any further comments.
An informed source told the portal that Ronis said things like “working for your own publicity instead of securing the successful development of the airport’s infrastructure projects” to Luhse.

Rumors spread about Luhse’s possible resignation at the end of August. At the time, this probability was linked to the expected difficulties with the airport’s infrastructure project. It seems that TM Ronis, whose ministry experiences one failure after another, has finally decided to act and will, possibly, sacrifice the tender-responsible Luhse, as sources from the ministry report.

Aside from Luhse, the airport’s Board has Andis Daimlics, Ilona Lice, and Aldis Murnieks (all appointed during the Green Farmer minister Augulis’ time). This year’s Board also features ‘Olsteins group’ Kaspars Ozolins and Antra Duntava, who is related to the political rear lines of the National Union.
The second stage of the airport’s infrastructure development project had four possible candidates. The winner was the union of FCC, Hochtief and ACB. This group offered the lowest price – 79 487 895.39 euros. The owner of Hochtief Solutions Latvia is a German Hochtief Solutions A.G.

The airport’s infrastructure development project provides for a new covering of the runway, strengthening of the flight hub, construction of a new maneuver runway, reconstruction and expansion of waiting areas, construction of an airplane anti-freeze coating platform, as well as perform a number of other airport function and development significant improvements. The project’s total costs are planned at 81 million lats (115 million euros) – 39.9 million lats will be allocated from Riga airport and 41.1 million lats – from the European Cohesion fund, as the information from the Finance Ministry states.